


On the Edge of Safe

by sistermercury



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Oral Sex, Poisoning, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 14:46:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2392226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistermercury/pseuds/sistermercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someday she'll explain to him the kind of attachment spies can form around their marks. Today, she just wants to get him home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set somewhere in the ether between The Winter Soldier and Age of Ultron.

_He used to be better at hiding_ , she thought. 

 Natasha could no longer claim this particular task to be her job, not anymore. Actually, this technically counted as stalking, all things considered. She passed soundlessly through the corner store, following him like a second shadow. It was easy for her to go relatively unnoticed, all a matter of the right mannerisms and costuming, her red hair tucked beneath a baseball cap. Bruce Banner treaded down the aisle, distractedly tossing a loaf of wonder bread into a plastic basket, while scrutinizing a the headlines of _The Washington Post_. ‘DEPT. OF DEFENSE STRUGGLES TO REGROUP AFTER SHIELD FALLOUT.’ She frowned slightly. That’s why she was there, after all. She wasn’t the only one who could suffer tremendously in a post-SHIELD world. 

 She hadn’t planned on this, not immediately at least. Having so much of her former life now laid out, beat by terrible beat, for everyone to see, was difficult in a way she had not anticipated. Having long known how to keep herself safe and out of the public’s reach, she did not struggle to carry herself through to the next day. Having SHIELD suddenly pulled out from under her (by her own doing, even if Steve and Fury and Maria had all agreed, she was still the triggerman, so to speak), there was no next mission. No marks. No covers. There would probably be Capitol Hill hearings until the end of time, and hey, maybe someday she would even be arrested, but until then, she reached out for purpose. She wasn’t without options. HYDRA still loomed, skittering on the underbelly of American defense departments and beyond. She’d been courted by several intelligence agencies worldwide, promising amnesty in exchange for her skill set. Admittedly, she was hesitant to sign herself into someone else’s service. SHIELD had been her harbor for so long, and finding that she may have done HYDRA’s work ate at her a bit. No, she needed some quiet contemplation, time to consider Black Widow’s place in the world. So she decided to gather her allies, even if that meant watching them from afar, making sure they were staying afloat. 

 Which, naturally, brought her to Bruce. 

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  _“What do you mean, he’s not with you?”_   She doesn’t mean to sound so alarmed, practically hissing into her phone, and Tony, no idiot, picks it up immediately. 

  _“Was I supposed to put a v-chip in him? He’s a grown, indestructible man, I don’t know. One minute he’s playing with a rad detector in my living room, the next he’s got his sad little duffel bag all packed up and off to god knows where.”_ She hears him sigh. _“I told him he had a room as long as he wanted, but…I don’t know, you try talking him out of rabbiting across the country. He’s stubborn, like, he’s actually very terrible and stubborn.”_ This is a setback and they both know it, especially now that Bruce’s safety net had disappeared. She’d been hoping rather direly that, if he was hiding, it was behind Stark Tower’s wall of weaponry and legal defense. 

  _“Does he have anything? Any resources?”_ She’s seen him get by with next to nothing, but neither Tony or Pepper would let him get away with that, and she’s grateful. He has a debit card, well-funded and hard to trace, warm clothes, first aid, satellite phone, and anything else he might need in dire straights. Tony sounds tired as he speaks, and it’s clear to see that caring about Bruce Banner is a delicate and nerve-wracking business. 

 

———————————————————————————————

 He looked well enough, from what she could immediately discern. Dressed shabbily, but he certainly wasn’t out of place. His newest haven was a fishing town on the coast of Washington. A quasi-popular destination for hikers, outdoor-enthusiasts, the area was literally called Cape Disappointment. She read on a plaque that it was named by the man who had missed out on discovering the nearby Columbia River, but after she had recovered from her _inappropriate laughter,_ she sighed knowing that Bruce would choose this place, of all places. _He would. He really would,_ she thought. 

 His jeans already had holes forming around the knees and his flannel shirt looked threadbare, but he was there. Solid. Unharmed. Buying bread. For a moment, Natasha wondered if that might be enough for her, that she could keep a watchful, but distant eye on him, only intervening if necessary. It was hard not to scrutinize him, knowing she was probably subconsciously looking for a reason to pull him back, but the truth was, SHIELD had ordered her to watch him for years, and this wasn’t even close to some of the hell she’d watched him go through. But he was good at hiding things, and she found herself cataloguing; the dark circles under his eyes, the sharp line of his cheekbones, the grey that crept underneath his dark thicket of hair, seemingly more every time she saw him. He looked a little washed out, but taking one glance at the pouring rain outside, she supposed it came with the territory. A quiet sigh escaped her as she watched him from the corner of the bait and tackle section of the store. There would always be that tiny bit of novelty to observing him, which she _knew_ was unfair. _A Hulk in his natural habitat, checking the freshness on a carton of blueberries._ As he moved on to a crate of apples, she found herself squirming. Okay, she told herself. He’s safe. Pull back. 

 “Heads up.” 

 An apple zipped through the air and as her hand rose unconsciously to catch it, giving off a little ‘thwack’ as it hit her palm, her eyes shot across it’s trajectory, to where Bruce stood, arms crossed. She squared her shoulders, eyebrow raised, and she toyed with the apple for a moment, briefly considering throwing it right back at him. They remained like that for a second, staring at each other across tables of tackle boxes, and for once, Natasha couldn’t tell what he was thinking. There’s something in his face, creased into the lines of his brow, and she couldn’t tell if it was distrust, worry or disappointment. And never one to make a scene, he turned around, placing a carton of blueberries in his basket, and headed for the checkout counter without another word. 

 ———————————————————————————————

 She was waiting for him outside the store, arms crossed tight across her chest as she struggled to keep her frustration at bay. Why was he _doing_ this? Bruce no longer lived in a world that didn’t want him. It had finally stepped up to the plate, willing to adapt to him, despite the fear he could inspire. _Maybe that’s projection,_ she admitted to herself. There was a need to smooth over some of the lingering messiness of their first (and last) meeting, and she knew a part of that meant coming to terms with fear, and finding out if it remained mutual. A part of her would always be a little terrified of the Hulk. But she wanted to erase some of the resentment she’d seen lingering on the edges of their every interaction. 

  _Loki’s manipulating you._

_And you’ve been doing what, exactly?_

 It wouldn’t be easy to explain to him, that he didn’t understand the kind of attachments spies could put on their assignments. Terrified or not, she’d rooted for him. 

 A little jingling bell announced his exit and before she knew it, he placed a bag of groceries in her hand as he handled two others, along with the keys to a beat-up old jeep. Natasha masked her surprise quickly, and placed the bag in the back. They both seemed invested in the idea of playing this off as normal, as planned, but she could see the stored tension in the hunch of his shoulders, and the anxious darting of his eyes. She withdrew her duffel bag from the rented sedan, piled into the passenger seat, settling in with a faint sigh. He adjusted his mirror and she saw a faint tremor in his hands. 

 “Do you like pie?” 

“Hmm?” She turned her head to face him. 

“If I made a pie, would you eat it?” 

 Her brows furrowed closely. He sank a little in his seat, and she swore she could see traces of pink staining the corners of his cheeks. “This is not the conversation I was really expecting.” She finally replied, somewhat mutely. “But yes.” Given that answer, he pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road. He didn’t say much more as they pulled out of town and neared the edges of the dense pine forest, but she didn’t mind it. She was still a little stuck on the pie. If he had the time to pick up baking, she thought, things couldn’t be so bad. 

 ———————————————————————————————

 “Home” for Bruce was a one-room cabin that rested on the edge of the woods, in a neat line of identical cabins, and Natasha figured they were popular with hunters or fishermen or recluse human-mutates. It was shabby, but not without its comforts, and she took in the little details, the things that told her that he had made the space his own. His only dirty dishes were a pile of coffee-browned mugs, and she wondered how long he had put off going into town. Those hideous brown shoes of his hid in the corner, hopefully abandoned for the black work boots he wore now.  It did seem to suit him, admittedly, probably better than Stark Tower had, even with all it’s security and opportunity. Old habits really did seem to die hard and she wondered if Bruce actually liked the mountain man lifestyle or maybe he just couldn’t accept deserving more. 

 As he began to pile his groceries into the fridge, she took the chance to look at what he called life, and also check the security of his perimeter. Looking out the window, she frowned. The forest was dense and could give plenty of cover to snipers or worse. She decided not to mention it and filed it away in the back of her mind. As promised, pie crust was thawing on the counter. 

 “So.” He was rooting through the spice cabinet. Natasha toed off her boots and began to prep the tiny fireplace with logs. They might as well be comfortable while they were hashing out team politics. She held a match to some bunched up newspaper, pleased as it caught fire, engulfing the logs above it. “So?” she said, poking her head into the kitchen, watching with closely veiled amusement as he handled a bowl of freshly rinsed blueberries, his fingers leaving wet marks in a torn magazine recipe. 

 He caught her looking, setting the bowl down, lips pursed as he leaned against the stovetop. On anyone else, this expression could have been called pouting through and through, but she couldn’t help but find it endearing on him. Normally, she had no use for the painfully earnest but seemed to find herself surrounded by the type more and more. With someone like Steve, it could either be a blessing or an obstacle, his earnestness had evolved into a sort of moral badge that he had to keep in check, and she supposed she could never truly hold it against him. But Bruce wore his emotions like open wounds, likely against his own will, and she had always relied on that, to help protect him but also to soothe her own fears. The Hulk-related ones, specifically. 

 “Well, you’re certainly not stalking me on Fury’s orders anymore.” He said, dumping the blueberries into a saucepan. Her shoulders slumped. “Do I need orders to check in on you?” she asked, crossing her arms. “You flew the coop on Stark. It caught my attention.” He sighed, pushing a hand through his hair. She caught the faintest smudge of purple juice near his temple. “He didn’t send me. If you were going to ask that next.” She said calmly. He shook his head, picking up a measuring cup filled almost to the brim with an amber liquid. Stepping a bit closer, she caught the warm scent of maple syrup. “Things are different now, you know.” His eyes rose from their fixed point, hands robotically stirring the syrup into the blueberries. “Not much.” He concluded with a shrug. 

 She knew SHIELD’s collapse must have rattled him, but watching him move, finding old anxieties in every line and shadow of his face put a knot in her stomach. “They _are_.” She quietly insisted. Her posture softened and she plucked a stray blueberry from the bowl, inspecting it before popping it between her teeth. “I can’t actually blame you for ditching Stark, not really, not in my heart of hearts.” She said. “Being anywhere near his orbit is very involved.” He turned on the gas burner, and the smell of simmering blueberries and sugar filled the room. His posture softened a bit. 

 “It wasn’t that.” He said quietly, reading the recipe, or pretending to, it was difficult to tell. “No.” She said, watching him closely, almost refusing to do anything else. “You thought he might get hurt.”  He didn’t respond, turning the blueberries over and over with the plastic spatula in a repetitive, calming motion. “Bruce…” He finally looked up.

 “Tony has his own enemies, he doesn’t need mine too.” 

 She sighed audibly. This combination of pragmatism and pessimism, although technically pretty smart, was the kind of thing that would take years to undo _without_ having a Hulk on your back. The painful part was how much she understood this, the way you could fear dragging all your demons everywhere you went. “I know it’s hard,” she began carefully. “But I think you need to start realizing that there are a few people who would get pretty offended if someone tried to hurt you.” He began stirring again, rhythmically, meditative, staring somewhere in-between the pot and the stove. The corners of his cheeks were pink, and she resisted the urge to reach her hand up and try and take away some of that heat and anxiety burning inside him. 

 “Even you?” It wasn’t unkind, the way he said it. A scowl pushed it’s way onto her features. “Especially me.” She said pointedly. “Whether you believe me or not, it’s always been my intention to help you.” Something within her tensed and threatened to snap. “I should leave.” That seemed to catch his attention. 

 “No-“

 She was already wound. “Well, I didn’t come here for pie and a pity party.” Her hands rested on her hips, and she could tell Bruce was flustered, not that it was particularly hard to get him to that point. He was tired, too. Bruce seemed to wear fatigue like a second skin, and she guessed that the Hulk didn’t give him much quarter to rest, mentally or physically, but he looked as if he’d been whittled down since last she saw him. Pared to his sharper points. “You don’t have to leave.”  She figured this could go on forever, she could try and get him to come home (“home”) and he could come up with a thousand good reasons not to, and it would never end. 

 There had to be a middle ground, she reasoned. 

 “They know everything about me, you know.”  She shrugged, taking another blueberry from the bowl. “Everything. Down to dental records and internet browsing history.” That made him smile a bit. “I have lived a longer life than you think, and now it’s everyone’s business.” She caught his eyes falling to her lips and popped the second blueberry between her teeth. “I assume the same is true for you. Our files on you started day one.” _My files_ , she thought. Nearly all of the observatory data on Bruce and the Hulk came from her, at least before she’d been pulled away towards Stark. “So yeah, a few old friends might turn up.” Her hand reached out delicately, and slowly, coming to rest on his shoulder. “But you won’t have to face them alone this time, okay?”  She rubs gently against his shoulder blade, pleased when he doesn’t pull away. Even Bruce wasn’t immune to creature comforts. He had done well presenting himself as a very contained package- do not disturb, contents under pressure- but he was a man all the same. 

  _A man missing someone_ , she reminded herself as she pulled away. 

 “You should stay.” He said, turning his head towards her. “If you want.” He worried his bottom lip before turning back to the syrupy sweet ink-black creation he’d made in the saucepan. She nodded resolutely. “I’ll take that crust out of the wrapper.” The minutes passed with a wonderful sort of ease that warmed her to the core. It was rare to see him relaxed like this, focused maybe, but not relaxed. 

 “So I have to ask, what’s with the pie?” she said, pinching the crust around the scalloped edges of the glass dish. She moved out of his way as he moved quickly with the steaming hot pan, spooning the contents open-faced into the crust. He made sure it spread evenly, and Natasha wondered were this came from. Was Betty a baker? Was it a remaining habit from childhood? 

 “Sometimes you just want things, you know?” That was the only answer she was likely to get. 

 The pie went into the oven and she wondered how to spend the next thirty minutes. In what seemed like an act of mercy, Bruce suddenly produced a few bottles of wine and she couldn’t have been more pleased. Red _and_ white. He was no slouch. She settled into the couch next to him, crossed-legged, sipping on Washington’s finest pinot noir with a smile that suggested a cat who’d just laid eyes on a canary. It tasted like the dark and dirty earth, and she could have kissed him for it. Bruce was favoring an acid-dry gewurtztraminer. “Favoring” meant he was drinking like pending amputee staring at a doctor’s saw. 

 "Didn’t figure you for a drinker. For awhile, you seemed to be all about that clean living.” He smiled, setting his glass down. 

 “Alcohol is a natural depressant.” Her eyebrow quirked. “You were right to take a break from Tony, maybe.” He was grinning now, self-conscious but relaxed. “No, I just…meant that I don’t worry so much about some things any more.” He poured more wine into his glass, and topped off hers. “It’s a fine line, I know it is, but…” 

 “No.” She said quietly. “No one else knows your limits better than you. No one knows mine better than me, etc etc.” She reached forward, clinking his glass gently, nudging his knee with her foot. “Cheers.” She sat back with another sip. “You have good taste. You weren’t saving this, right?” Bruce laughed, tossing back more of his own. “Saving it for what?” 

 ———————————————————————————————

 An hour and one bottle later, Bruce was asleep in his corner, tightly pulled in until she moved and gently coaxed him into stretching out. She caught the oven timer before it could sound and wake him up, pulling the pie out and resting it on the stovetop. It smelled perfect, warm and tart and inviting. She was pleased on his behalf. Stealing a glass of water from the fridge, she watched the rise and fall of his chest, the flickers of his eyes. She reminded herself to get some water into him as soon as he woke up. Being wine-drunk could be euphoric, but the result was much less desirable. 

 Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she knew it only could have been one of a few numbers. 

  _Barton: cells in berlin cleared out. coming home soon. so bored. what are you up to?_

 She smiled. Clint had gone overseas to help find any SHIELD agents whose covers had been blown by the leak. She would have gone herself, had fought and begged to go herself, but Fury had worried the mission might have become to “personal” for her. And for a few days, she hated him for that. Of course it was personal. The leak may have been agreed upon, but she’d swung the axe. She’d wanted to help them, to rescue them from whatever hell they were now finding themselves in. Fury told her not to go. That she would get lost in it, and she might not get out. That it wasn’t her fault. Clint took the mission for her, gladly and willingly. She knew he would spare her the worst details, but always shared their success stories. So many of them were coming home now. Whether or not they were still whole, that was left unanswered. 

 “Is it done?” she heard a faint slur from the living room. “Smells done.” 

 She texted back: _right now? Babysitting._

 “Yes.” She answered back, bringing a glass of water over to his side. “Drink this and go back to sleep.” He accepted, eyes shut against what she supposed was the earth spinning off of its axis. “I’m not very smart sometimes.” He said as he downed the glass. Smiling, she brushed his hair away from his forehead. “No. But I think we’ll both survive.” He turned towards her, glassy-eyed. “Why are you so nice to me?” With a sigh, she took one of his hands, fingertips tracing the lines of his veins. “I wasn’t…the way I acted before…” She shook her head. “That was before, okay? We both had a lot to be afraid of.”  He nodded. “I’m-“ she squeezed his hand with a touch of sharpness.

 “Don’t say sorry. You’re a good man. You know you are. I know you are.” 

 He accepted this, and settled back to sleep. Another phone buzz.

  _Which one? Stark, thunder thighs, old navy?_

 Looking down at Bruce, she brushed her knuckles against his cheek with a sigh. _Oh, I’m in trouble._ She reluctantly pulled her hands away from him, sliding off the couch. 

  _First of all, I thought we agreed that ‘old navy’ was a terrible nickname._

 

 


	2. there's no race, there's only a runner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce often mistakes being resilient with being resistant. It drives Natasha nuts.

 Oh god. Oh _god_. 

 If you could crack Bruce’s head open and hear his thoughts, you would probably only hear a fairly pitiful whining noise. _Mistakes_ , he thought as he rolled over, away from the sun. His entire body was experiencing dry mouth. _I’ve done mistakes._ Bruce did not drink often. Before the accident, it had ranged from “just let me get through grad school” to only on social occasions, and after the accident, almost never. Alcohol was tricky. It decreased the heart rate, but could make you impulsive and emotional. And a gentle BPM wasn’t much good if you were having a drunken meltdown. 

 For years, he vowed never to drink, having seen what it had done to his father. But now, he figured that it wasn’t drinking that made the old man such an asshole. 

 Now regretting that slip in judgment, he sat up, bones popping back into place because this couch, while comfortable, was not fit for sleeping. He ran his hands through his hair, shoving it back into some semblance of place, squinting ahead at nothing as he focused on breathing and thinking and not throwing up.

“Hey sunshine.” Natasha’s voice was like a bell, usually pleasant, but right now- loud and somewhat alarming. His response was a somewhat unbecoming groan. She plopped down across from him, reclining in the loveseat with a slice of pie and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

“What time is it?” His voice sounded like he’d been gargling hot asphalt. She kicked her socked feet up onto the coffee table. 

 “Ten-ish. I would’ve thought you were dead, but you snore like a hibernating bear.” She smirked over her next bite. She held up her plate towards him. “Breakfast?” 

 Some of this agony ended as it was destined to: with his forehead pressed against the plastic rim of the toilet. It was a little disheartening, usually his metabolism bordered on inhuman, and he chalked it up to all the energy he shared with the Hulk, but he could still get hungover? Uncool. As he exited the bathroom, grey-faced and swearing, Natasha pressed a red bottle of gatorade into his hands and drew the curtains. _She must have bought this while I was asleep._ He collapsed back onto the couch and tried to ignore the persistent quivering of his insides.

“This is embarrassing.” He grumbled into the cushion. She returned to her pie, picking at the crust contemplatively. “I usually don’t-“

 “Drink like that?” she said with a slight smile. “No.” She concluded with a slight nod. “I was-“ She cut him off again, and he couldn’t tell if he was charmed or annoyed. 

 “Nervous. Trying to be fun.” He managed to get the cap off the bottle and sipped tentatively. The rush of sugar and electrolytes was deceptively rewarding. “You don’t have to entertain me.”  Masking his embarrassment with more gatorade, he sighed, pushing the couch-flattened wave of curls that had managed to tumble back into place. “Trust me, I could actually use some peace and quiet.”

Bruce worried his lower lip for a minute, picking at the plastic edges of the bottle’s wrapper. Outside, thunder rumbled and his knees drew up just the slightest bit. Storms seemed to have some sort of effect, maybe the frequency of sound waves in thunder or the electric charge of lightning, that seemed to put the big guy on standby, no matter how calm he might have been. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that Hulk had his own triggers, things that made him unsettled. Natasha stood, rested a hand on his knee for a moment. “So rest up. Maybe I’ll go hiking.” Looking up, he caught her close-lipped, benevolent little smile before she slipped off and out the door. 

 “But don’t get me wrong, I’m not leaving without you.” 

 ———————————————————————————————

 Bruce could never claim to dream easily. And now, in between dense, restless patches of sleep, technicolor stereo-sound scenes played themselves out in his head, and he started to remember why he never drank much. In another time, he might have been in trouble, too emotionally off-kilter to separate the emotional distress from the physical, but it seemed (or maybe he just hoped) that Hulk was a little more in tune to things these days. Banner having a freakout was not a valid excuse to let his other self go unchained. But nevertheless, there are scenes with tanks, bright and loud, scenes with hardly anything at all but the cold snow, heavy steel sitting in his hands, and the grating of a barrel against his teeth, and scenes of chasing blood red hair, steel warping and glass shattering around the two of them. 

 He must have been showing some sign of distress, because before he knew it, cold hands were turning his face towards the light, smoothing his hair back, a low soft voice cooing nonsensically into his ear until he snapped awake, sweat beading at his temples and around his neck. Bolts of tension ran through his head in time to the lightning flashing outside- _not enough gatorade_ \- and he groaned into the pillow, swallowing back the bitter taste in his mouth.

“Easy.” She murmured, kneeling next to him, fingers running in soothing sweeps down his neck. He could smell the rain on her, and the forest- damp earth and pine and the vaguest tang of ozone. His body was calmed by the action, pulse slowing while his skin just seemed to get warmer and warmer beneath her hands, and all of the sudden, he couldn’t _stand_ it.

 “What are you doing?” he seemed to spit out at her, jerking up and away from her grasp. She removed her hands, but if she was confused or shaken, she didn’t show it, regarding him cooly. “What are you _doing_ here?” He ran his hands over his upper arms, trying to quell this ugliness that had followed him from his sleep, but it was bubbling up now, unstoppable, and a part of him was relieved. _She’ll leave. I won’t destroy her._

 “Of all the times you could have showed up, you choose _now_?” he said, voice cracking with lingering fatigue, all the while his eye burned, glittering with anger, not acid green, but almost black as his pupils blew wide. “When I actually _want_ to be alone? Years and years of peeking over my shoulder, all those times I was- ” He stood up, pacing away from her while she just stood still, watching him with a stern, unwavering gaze. _This is not becoming._ “You care. That’s nice.” He nodded, swallowing hard on the lump in his throat.

“But if this is because you need a project, or you need to prove something to yourself, I don’t have that kind of time.” _Cruel,_ he thinks, and his cheeks burn red. He turned away from her, displeased with himself. He can hear her moving behind him, and keeps waiting to hear the door open and close behind him, but it never did. 

 A hand pressed against his back and she forced herself into his vision. Anger sparkled in her eyes and in the tight line of her lips, but she was still there. “Are you done?” her voice was low and quiet, and Bruce wondered if this was what some men heard in their last seconds on earth.

Her eyes never moved from his, even as his darted anxiously around the room. “I’m gonna be sick-“ he stuttered quietly, attempting to escape and her hand shot up, taking his jaw between her fingers. She didn’t hurt him, she was smarter than that, but she forced him to look at her, really look at her. She forced him to _just shut up for a second_.

 “Do I look scared of you?” Bruce just sighed a bit, heart doing sick, slow flips in his chest.

“You don’t now.”

Her fingers tightened just that little bit. She wasn’t hurting him, but she wasn’t about to let him go, let him get away with this. “Why didn’t you stay in New York?” Her eyes bore into him and he finally seemed to align himself to her frequency. “I get restless.” Her fingers tightened again. “Why didn’t you stay?” 

He bit on his tongue. “I didn’t want Tony to think he needed to-“ She pressed in tighter, and he knew she could break his jaw, were this a different situation. “Try again.” She said, with a patience that suggested that they were at target practice, and he was a bad shot. “Why are you doing this-“ he blurted, increasingly nervous that Hulk might think he was being threatened. “Like you said, _I care_. _”_ She pulled him closer. “Try again.” 

  _Fuck you_ , he wanted to say, trying to pull himself back together, trying to come up with a lie that even she couldn’t see through, as if that were possible. “Exposed” had taken on another meaning entirely. 

 “I didn’t think I deserved it.” She released him within moments. He was left standing there, emotions swelling up in his chest. His vision blurred over, and knew that this couldn’t be the first time she saw him cry, but that didn’t help much. 

 “I didn’t deserve that space. That seat at the table, I wasn’t ready for it.” He scrubbed at his eyes, furious and embarrassed, but the white hot rage that he had reserved for her seemed to evaporate entirely. “When SHIELD’s network fell apart, I figured that was the perfect time to just, um…get away.” She reached out, fingers smoothing gently over the red marks she had left behind.

“Do you think Tony thought you were a pet project?” she asked quietly. He shook his head, eyes squeezing shut. “No.” He forced out, warm tears spilling out despite himself. “I didn’t want him to resent me.” He added, with an embarrassed sniff. “When I became a problem.” 

 Because that’s exactly what he was, really. A problem. Maybe not all the time, and he had some usefulness to make up for it. 

 He didn’t deserve Betty, her understanding, love, or bravery. He didn’t deserve to be on that roster, to be admired by people he didn’t even know. He didn’t deserve to be Tony’s collaborator, to have his own place in Avengers Tower. He didn’t deserve to be around those people when he was still so dangerous. He hadn’t deserved Natasha’s protection, or SHIELD’s, and all their intuition that made them build that cage that could be dropped out of the sky at a moment’s notice-

 “Stop.” She said gently, as if she could see his mind working endlessly. She had pushed him towards the edge of the cliff, and now she seemed set on bringing him back. “This is nonsense, Bruce.” He nodded, attempting to turn from her. She caught his shoulder effortlessly. He wondered if she would wrestle him to the ground if she found it necessary. “It’s valid…but it’s still nonsense.” Her lips turned up in the slightest of smiles, and she brought her hand up to the corner of his eyes, brushing away the leftover tears.

Thunder cracked outside, and he found himself succumbing to a full-body flinch, as if he didn’t have enough embarrassment to contend with, eyes clenched shut against the violent flickering of lightning that followed immediately after, the storm closing in around them. Her arms slipped around him, holding him with just enough pressure to keep him grounded.  “I’m gonna take you home.” She murmured in his ear. “Let me take you home.”

After a moment, his arms rose, wrapping around her waist , resting his chin on her shoulder. “Mine or yours?” he asked, unsurprised when she indelicately pinched at his side. He couldn’t help but smile softly. “Don’t be a smartass.” She chided gently. They remained like that for a few more moments, and Bruce was so unspokenly glad for it, because _god_ , it was nice being held. As she pulled away, he sank back down to the couch, listening as the storm began to roll away and subside down to just a faint and distant rumbling. She padded off towards the kitchen. 

 "Are you going to eat any of this damn pie you made?” he heard her call, and that got a laugh out of him. “If you could bring me some, maybe.” Glancing over, bathed in the yellow light of the old kitchen bulbs, she rolled her eyes a bit before smiling. “Fine.” She fake-whined as she cut through the cold crust with a knife. Even in the most domestic of situations, seeing her with a knife held its own sort of fascination. (Maybe even moreso when she’s licking pie-filling from the blade, he thought, before mentally kicking himself.)

She approached a moment later with a small slice and a fork, holding it out towards him. “Th-“ he took the plate from her hands, smiling at her in gratitude only to have the smile slip off his face within a matter of seconds. She was focused on something outside, eyes narrowed as she tried to look past the rain, past the dark. “Are you expecting someone else?” she asked, her voice a low and deadly hum. 

 “No-“ he attempted to sit up, to look out the window to see what she could see, but she pushed him back down. “Just stay where you are.” Her eyes narrowed, hands slipping back towards her belt, pulling out a holstered pistol he hadn’t realized she was carrying. Her eyes go cold, predatory, within moments, and if he weren’t scared of what he couldn’t see, he might have been mesmerized. Knowing not to keep him on the edge like this, she finally glanced down at him. “Just stay.” She said softly and evenly, able to be commanding without yelling. “Stay here, keep calm, and let me work, okay?” He nodded dumbly. Before she could step forward, the window burst, glass flying around them and crashing to the floor. Behind her, just inches above where her shoulder had been, a metal bolt has buried itself in the wall. A crossbow bolt, he’d learn later. He’s trying to numb himself to the shock, to the roar of the storm outside, crouched down by the floor. She had already taken off, chasing their aggressor towards the woods. He called out to her, which, in retrospect, was not one of his smarter ideas.

 Another arrow, poorly aimed, whizzed through the air, skimming the top of his shoulder, tearing through cloth and skin and hitting the wall with a dull ‘thwack.’ Hot blood bloomed down over his arm, and he didn’t even allow himself the time to register the pain before he let himself disappear. 

 The roar could be heard for miles. 

 


	3. raised on the edge of the devil's backbone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chemicals and trauma disguised as nature. Sometimes she remembers that her and Bruce are two sides of an awful coin.

Natasha already has one of them down, bullet right between the eyes, when she hears him. It’s seismic, the earth seems to shake a little bit but she ignores the urge to freeze and wait for Hulk to pass her by. She could take care of this, and worry about the big guy later. (This is adapting, she tells herself.) 

 The goal is to get as many of them down as possible without an overabundance of gunfire, risking civilian intervention. The rain nearly blinds her, but she can _hear_ them around her, hissed orders, wet boots in mud, the metallic click of reloaded weapons. _They have to be here for me,_ she thinks. Only an idiot would attack Bruce like this, with this kind of on-the-ground approach. They’re not small men, she thinks with a sigh, arms wrapping around a thick neck, twisting with a strength that was effortless. They always seemed to send these mountains after her, thinking that she could be easily overpowered with size alone. Large men tended to have large weak spots. 

 She can feel the Hulk moving in the distance, hear his feral roaring, and if she needed more confirmation of his presence, it came in the form of a black humvee, sailing across the sky in the field above her, weightless as a paper airplane, before landing with a deafening crash, suspended from the ground by the groaning branches of a pine tree. Two broken bodies tumble to the ground below, limbs bent oddly, but she doesn’t feel compelled to check if they’re alive. She will deal with them as they come to her. 

 She knows she can make it look like easy work, this quick dispatching, it’s her job to make this effortless, the way a rattlesnake’s strike seems effortless. Speed, however, does not always have to play such a big part. A spider may take hours to bind and eat it’s wriggling pray, but the fact remained- Natasha had been raised and trained and _made_ to replicate this deadly sense of ease. Snakes coiled to strike, spiders laying in wait. Chemicals and trauma disguised as nature. Sometimes she remembers that her and Bruce are two sides of an awful coin. 

 Hulk barrels into view, an almost artificial sight in a dark, heather and thistle laden field and she stills, watching him. There is power stored in every muscle in his body, coiled and tense, but he seems in no great hurry to use it. Maybe he also senses that this game needs some subtlety. As much subtlety as a Hulk can have, really, it only takes catching sight of a single assailant and he’s off again, tearing after him with a speed that always surprised her. If efficiency could be measured in destruction, the Hulk would be the most highly regarded creature on the planet. 

 They’re not as dumb as they seem and it’s no clearer when she chases one past the tree line, met with a thundering volley of gunfire from above, bullets hitting the ground like hail. In the dark, it was almost impossible to pick them out, the unforgiving rain not helping one bit. In front of her, the Hulk closed in on his target, in a state Clint would describe as “thoroughly fucking riled” and she can’t help but think that she doesn’t want Hulk to kill someone. Anyone, really. She didn’t like the idea of that sitting on Bruce’s shoulders, another stratified layer to weigh him down. Death was not an art for him, not in the way it was for her, or any of the others on the team. And yet he came with the highest threshold for destruction. She decides not to interfere. From what she had seen, Hulk was his own being. Whatever they shared, he and Bruce could hash it out. 

 The split second distraction is a mistake. They always are. 

 She feels it tear right through her, cold metal in the cold rain, blood spilling like acid, fierce and hot. Her cry is muffled by thunder, but as she reaches up, wet hands clasping around the crossbow bolt that’s pierced it’s way all the way through her right shoulder, she can tell Hulk has heard her, head whipping around, growling at something above her blurry line of sight. A green fist grabs into the treeline, pulling out a wriggling, screaming man. The crossbow clatters to the ground by Natasha’s feet. There is pleading for mercy in another tongue, German, she realizes but it’s cut off as Hulk roars in his face, hurls him through the woods, and she’s sure the impact will kill the man. Instead, she hears a faint splash. The coast must be just beyond the woods. 

 Above them, the moon begins to push through the rainclouds, and it’s not much but its _light_ and it’s all she needs, despite the pain and dizziness and terror that keeps wanting to creep up, all she needs to return to her work. All the men seem to be focused on Hulk now, and he’s leading them on a fruitless chase towards the beach. She knows she won’t be able to match his speed. One of their abandoned jeeps, pristine and un-smashed, appears in the clearing like a miracle and if she wasn’t hellbent on destroying these people, she might cry. The arrow is still stuck in her shoulder like a bad comedy prop, but she knows she can’t take it out, not yet, and she realizes in that moment how glad she is that she has Bruce. Yes, they would survive this, she decides. These guys, HYDRA, she figures, are too sloppy, but there’s no space in her heart to feel sorry for them. 

 Guiding the jeep through the Hulk’s path is tougher than it looks, with sweat dripping into her eyes and blood oozing onto her neck and collarbone, eyesight fading and flickering dangerously. But she hears the distinct crush of sand beneath her tires, head snapping up as the rain finally cleared and settled onto the windswept beach ahead of her. Taking a moment to grab the few weapons they left behind, she crept up to join them, the sound of her footsteps covered by a hail of bullets. Hulk was advancing on a group of weaponized humvees, snarling as he pushes against the relentless fire coming from the mounted machine guns attached, and Natasha wondered for a moment if they had known who they were up against. Undeterred by gunfire, he moved to destroy one, grabbing the top of the car as if it were a toy, black metal crunching beneath his hands. On the car door, a red skull grinning above slivering tentacles gleams in the moonlight. He hurls it into the ocean. Calculating the distance in her head, she knows that if the men inside survive, they will drown trying to swim to shore. 

 The larger caravan behind him seems to be mounting a difference kind of assault, men with rifles piling onto the roof and taking unsteady aim while Hulk focuses on the humvee nearest him, tearing the roof off. She catches a hint of mischief in his eyes, and were she not so afraid for him, she would be proud. She opens the door on the jeep, feet hitting the sand in a skid as she tries to charge towards the caravan, hoping to distract them, something, before-

 With chorus of clicks, it’s too late. When they fire, she doesn’t hear the crack of gunfire, but the clean whistle of darts, her breath catching in her throat as she hears the faintest impact as they hit his green skin. A whole sea of them, it would seem, hitting the expanse of his back. _Maybe vibranium_ , she thinks. The tips would have to be strong to get through his skin. To hurt him. A startled, keening noise escapes Hulk as he realizes what’s happened to him, reeling around towards the caravan with wounded imprecision. _Oh god. I can’t carry him. Not like this._

 The refusal to be taken, or pursued while wounded into the woods like a game animal, is what wakes her up enough to finish this. 

 Luckily, they seem too intent on celebrating their victory. Although she feels like she’s walking with the ease of a drunken sailor, they still don’t hear her coming, and two more bodies hit the sand. Keeping an eye on Hulk, she begins to notice something unexpected. He’s still with her. He’s awake, he hasn’t retreated back to Bruce’s body yet, he’s distracted and even _angrier_ but whatever they had thrown at him, it didn’t seem to be working. Relief floods her as she pulls the pin on a grenade, tossing it into the open window of very-full humvee, dashing ahead to use her green friend as cover. “C’mon.” She urges him, pulling at his finger like a child back towards the woods. Behind them, the explosion shakes the earth, sand turning to glass beneath the rubble. She stumbles with the aftershock, ears ringing and shrapnel flying overhead, and when she opens her eyes, she finds herself shrouded by Hulk’s large shadow as he shields his own face. Silence follows, then distant sirens. 

 Standing shakily, she regards him with a nod, taking him in for the first time since the invasion. She really can see Bruce in his face, in the stubble, the subtle crookedness of his teeth, a faint scar on his chin, but also in his expressions. She’s not used to seeing him like this, very still and coiled, still waiting to be attacked, but the acid green burn has left his eyes. When he turns his head, they refract light, like an animal’s. In his expression, anger and uncertainty, but not towards her. “Thanks,” she says softly, and is pleased when she gets a quiet grunt of acknowledgment and an unassuming shift in his eyes. Swallowing roughly, her hand rises, spreading her fingers around the arrow in an attempt to stem the blood. “Let’s go home.” Her voice is thick and tired and as Hulk watches her attempt to stumble back towards the cabin, he sighs. Placing himself in front of her, he turns and kneels, one arm extended. 

 In this state, the gesture is confusing. “Are you asking me to dance?” she slurs in his direction, and the humor is lost on him, as she anticipated. Realization comes quickly: _he’s offering to carry me._ Curiosity and trepidation ( _extreme trepidation)_ fight briefly before she sways, dangerously close to passing out. “You got it, big guy.” She says as she approaches him, leaning against his arm and sighing in relief as he adjusts, lifting her off the ground with ease and a gentleness that would have shocked her before. He walks deliberately, but not fast enough that it might hurt her worse. As she fights the urge to fall asleep, her eyes trace up to his face- focused. Thinking. He has the same furrow in his brow that Bruce gets when he’s deep in thought and she smiles. His skin is _warm_ , and she thinks that could be a good many things- kinetic energy, radiation, etc. It has a vague roughness, like sandpaper, thick and coarse enough to protect him from the worst weapons. Over his shoulder, she catches the faint glint of one of the darts, the ones that hadn’t fallen out yet. She wonders why they had failed so totally.

 Hulk’s stride gets them to the cabin quickly and he sets her onto the wooden porch deck as if she were made of glass, but it still gets a faint groan from her as she lets herself realize some of the pain of being shot. _This shoulder is destroyed._ The arrow had hit the gunshot scar left by the Winter Soldier as if it had been the marksman’s target, and she saw some major reconstruction ahead of her, and therapy on top of it. Pulling herself up, she looks around, a quiet “thank you” leaving her lips, but there’s no Hulk to thank. Instead, she spots Bruce on the ground, trying his best to sit up. He winces and reaches around, pulling the last dart from his skin. Without wasting time, she uses the last of her energy to pick herself off the porch, going to his side and reaching out with bloody hands, one resting on his shoulder, the other turning his face towards her.

 “You have to stay awake for me, okay?” she pleads, her voice shaking now. He’s pale and soaked through to the bone and she can tell by the hazy look in his eyes that there’s nothing he wants more than to collapse into the dirt beneath her, as he had done in the past. “I need your help.” The Hulk has left him warm, almost hot to the touch. It had to be hard, burning off that energy as one small man. “Bruce..” She strokes her hand across his cheek, trying to bring him around and she sighs in relief when he finally looks to her with as much clarity as he can muster. He stands, bringing her with him, and they are both a pitiful sight, half-naked and dirty and bloodied, but as he ushers her inside, throwing on a baggy black t-shirt over himself and stoking the untended coals of the fire from before, intending to warm up the room. “Let me grab my bag.” 

 Time is of the essence, and she knows this, but there’s something hot and coiling in her stomach that has nothing to do with medical emergencies. As he approaches in a sort of scurry, any of the animal grace Hulk possessed completely gone, he set the leather doctor’s bag aside, along with some less-than-savory looking tools. Pliers. Cooking tongs. Bolt cutters. Undeterred, she reached out with her good arm and caught his chin as he laid things out, smoothing a thumb over his jaw. She waits for his eyes to meet hers before she leans in and kisses him. He doesn’t pull away, and she catches his eyes fluttering shut, a soft sigh escaping him. She presses in a little harder in that moment, before retreating, pushing his hair away from his face. 

 He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he turns toward the kitchen, washing his hands vigorously. She smiles to herself, pleased to have the taste of him on her lips. It helps keep her head above water, so to speak.

Little victories. 

 


	4. to be alone with you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Bruce's many uses: superhero, doctor, big spoon.

He learns a lot about her in those moments. Cataloguing, so to speak. It’s what made him such a good fugitive for all those years. He worries if he will be a good enough doctor. 

 Handling the bolt cutters with the careful precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, Bruce cuts the arrowhead free from it’s shaft, brushing it to the floor as it clatters to the table. She’s laying on her side, half-awake, blinking slowly at the movement of his hands. Her lips are dry and colorless, and her pupils are blown wide from waning adrenaline. He exhales sharply, cutting away her clothes with her permission, muttering the next steps so she can hear them and understand them. “Ready?”

 With her little nod, he pulls the arrow shaft from her shoulder, stomach twisting as she yelps in agony, settling quickly and containing the groans and whimpers that wanted to escape. Once his hands are free and clean, he’s applying pressure with layers and layers of gauze, and she’s gripping his forearm with a strength that suggested she could still have the upper hand if she needed to. He tries to borrow it from her, these little bits of strength, because if he was being honest, he feels like there’s nothing holding him together, skin itching and alive with metabolic heat, insides heavy and all his joints aching. His back itches from the darts, like it was covered in a thousand tiny pinpricks. It wasn’t unusual for Hulk to leave him feeling like this, weak and wrung out, but as he twisted his shoulder to wipe at the faint sheen of sweat beading at his temples, it was hard not to think about how sick he felt. But it’s nothing, he tells himself. After the battle of New York, he slept for two days straight and puked his guts out a few times, all because the big guy had put in a hard day at the office. 

 “You awake?” he hears her below him and looks down at her dark eyes and her dazed, toothy smile. “I think.” He said quietly, allowing her to lay flat now that the bleeding has slowed to a dull ooze. She’s scrutinizing his face very carefully and after a long beat, Bruce raises an eyebrow that suggested she should skip ahead to the point.

“You have a nice profile.” She says with a yawn. “A little cleaning up might do you wonders.”

Instinctually, he runs his hand over the shaggy little beard he’s been allowing to grow for awhile now and sighs, which elicits a little frown from her. “None of that.” It’s been a long time since someone very efficiently chipped under a few layers of anxious strata.

He smiled as he cleaned the wound and prepped a syringe with heavy antibiotic, and she smiled back. “Where on earth did you get all this stuff?” Her voice is a tired slur that worries him but he straightens his nerves quickly. “I stole it from Stark Industries medical bay. They wouldn’t miss it at all.” That gets him another smile, even as he’s pressing the needle into the skin right above the wound. “Sheesh, Doc.” 

 “You probably couldn’t carry me over to that couch, could you?” she asks, already knowing the answer. Her color is improving bit by bit, but because Bruce can’t perform an onsite transfusion without a horrible disaster, he knows she’ll need time to rest. He’d have to keep her safe for now, and that makes him so deeply anxious, even though he knows he’s up to task. At least he thinks he is. God, he wishes he could just pass out on the floor right now. “You picked the wrong teammate to visit for that.” She smirks, back to her old self very quickly. “I don’t think so.” Slinging her good arm around his shoulder, she pulls herself up with a hiss and they walk together. With a little prep, she settles into his bed and he gets her to drink a not-insignificant of sugar-diluted water, a poor substitute for modern medicine, but she quietly assures him that she heals fast.

“Can I put in a request for eggs in the morning?” Pushing the wet hair away from her forehead, he smiled softly. “Maybe you should plan on sleeping in this time.” Not even missing a beat, with her close-mouth cat smile; “Brunch, then.” 

 He’s about to leave her, to let her rest and clean up the mess in the living room, cover the broken window, but she catches his hand before he can get very far. He freezes, tired nerves springing back to life and he looks down at her with wide, dark eyes.

“Stay.” She whispers. When he mumbles something about grabbing a chair, she tugs at his hand again. “Get in here. You can keep me warm.”

It takes him a moment, gauging the various degrees of appropriate and inappropriateness, wondering (and worrying) how close she wants to get, and finally, hoping he smells okay. He slides in next to her, maintaining a respectable distance, which she closes almost immediately, moving closer to him and turning on her side to press against his chest, head resting against his shoulder. His breath catches in his throat. 

"Easy..." she whispers, nuzzling a bit near his jaw and he realizes she must be able to feel his pulse. 

 Closeness had become this unattainable luxury for so long. Out of fear, by choice, self-imposed, and Bruce _knows_ this. 

 At first his face heats with shame and misery. He’d kept Betty away, denied himself letting her in and denied her his long-awaited and much missed affection. What was he doing? Was he this much of a heel, coming undone so quickly? Natasha sighs, a warm puff of air against his neck and he almost loses it right there and then, because he is alive with want and exhausted and in pain. Maybe this was just weakness, wanting to be near Natasha in this way, his breath all but stolen by all of this. Her skin is still cold and damp from the rain and he pulls the blanket up around both of them, despite the overwhelming waves of heat he felt. He listens to her breathing, and tries to match it’s gentle rhythms to calm himself. 

 Her lips press gently against his neck and she curls further into him, allows him to wrap his arms around her waist. 

 “This could be good, you know.” She murmurs. His eyes shut, sighing. 

 “I know.” 

 “Are you willing to let me try?” 

 The very gentle, very timid kiss he gives her is a good enough answer.

 “Where they looking for me or you?”

 She doesn’t respond. Maybe it didn’t matter to her, at the end of the day.

 She finally falls asleep, and he just watches her, the little flickers of her eyes as she dreams. It’s a comfort, but not big enough to hold everything together. _This could be good_ , she insists, but he can’t imagine it. Maybe it’s just been too long. Maybe he can’t imagine himself as one of the deeper centers of her affection, why she would want him. Not when there was _literally anyone else_ as a better option. Not him, not a bad man with an even worse creature tucked away. Hot-tempered and spineless all at once. She knew better men, even if she didn’t care about looks or skills or money, there were _better_ men in the world. 

_Not even if I were the last man on Earth...and I might be-_

  _This is bad, I’m bad, I feel bad-_ The world spins a bit behind his eyes and he counts her heartbeats to stay grounded. Her cooling skin is a comforting contrast and he finds himself pressing his forehead against hers. Sleep doesn’t come easily, it never has for him. But deep down, somewhere past this mounting feeling of sickness, the shame, the fear, there is something new and calm. Something that makes him feel safe. He wants to keep it. 

 


	5. hello love, the thistle and the burr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The line between desire and charity was razor thin to the both of them, and Natasha conducts her own experiment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the smut chapter.

When she finally wakes up, the room is cold. 

 It doesn’t necessarily surprise her, his absence in the bed. The snow gathering on the frosted windowsill especially does not surprise her. The bedside table is littered with the leftovers of what she equated to hours, if not a few days, of diligent care. Old bandages, glasses of water, antiseptic and pain killers. In a small wastebasket beneath her, a few empty syringes. Natasha sighs, stretching her sore limbs out with careful precision. She feels exhausted, and being nearly bloodless will do that to you, but well looked after. Strength would return easily. This doesn’t stop her from making a few more audible noises, little sighs, quiet groans, in hopes that he might come back. That maybe he would even come back to bed. 

 She realizes how much she wants that, and it’s a strange feeling. Stirring and warm and terrifying. 

 She knows he’ll measure himself against the entire mysterious line of her life, romance included, weighing What He Knows against what she’ll never tell him, and will always find a way to make it known he is deficient, or not enough. He will weigh himself against Clint, which will do him no favors. This makes her sigh again, thinking of Clint, and not unkindly. The promises or lacktherof they’d made to each other ensured that there would be men before Clint and women before Natasha and more men and women after, but this was an untidy intersection of interests, she supposed. But they were adults. They could probably both get over it. 

 Logically, this shouldn’t be happening. She should want not love him. He should not want to love her. But if things in this world worked out the way they were supposed to, she’d have been tossed in an unmarked grave with an arrow bolt through the head. He would have died in agony, poisoned beyond relief. She no longer minds taking what she wants, and she thinks she might be able to teach him the same. 

 She has to find him first, though. The thought makes her huff into the cold air. She supposed she’d conjured up something deeply romantic in her mind, that he would be bent over in some chair, deeply frazzled, too worried to leave her side. He was smarter than that, and she probably would have protested if she’d seen it. But still. He’s making her get out of bed. 

 The living room is dim and somehow even colder, despite the well-patched window keeping out the wind and snow. Embers cool in the fireplace and for a moment, she wonders if he’s stepped out somewhere. “Bruce…? She calls, hoarse and faint. It’s difficult not to immediately b-line back towards the bedroom, to earn back those few desired ounces of strength, and it carried with it that faint and repetitive hope, that he might join her. She might have to drag him there, she thinks, pale lips curving into a soft, determined smile. 

 Worry creeps in when she doesn’t find himself in the first quick sweep. This cabin doesn’t even have many rooms, the living area bled into the kitchen, only interrupted by the bathroom and the side bedroom. He wouldn’t have been on the flimsy porch, which must have been almost walled in by snow at this rate. She frowns at the fat flakes drifting down from the slate grey sky. That would make driving out of here difficult. And as much as she was enjoying the “vacation”, she wants to get him out of here. For at least another day, they seemed stuck. 

 After a few more panicky minutes, she’s _this close_ to pulling on her boots and leaping out into the snow drifts to find him, when she hears a faint rustling above her, and then, a quiet “up here.” She turns, eyes drifting over the rungs of a ladder, built into the side of the wall, leading to a tiny loft space that she had mostly ignored earlier. Yellow lantern light glows, casting shadows, and she can see the outline of his shoulders, and the fuzzy corona of his hair drifting into view. 

 She makes the climb despite his protests, joining him in the little space, where an unframed mattress lay on the floor, piled with quilts. Books are scattered about the floor, maps and notes, the skylight shrouded by ice above them. Even in this minor elevation, the air seems several degrees colder and she wonders how he’s not _freezing_ up here, blankets or no blankets. But he seems content, sitting on the mattress in his boxers and a sweatshirt, holding onto a flimsy copy of something called _Meditations in an Emergency._ Glancing up at her, he dog-ears a page and motions for her to sit. She does, with somewhat of a thud and a low groan, and sighs softly as she sees Bruce’s soft, sleep-blurred features tighten into a grimace. Bruce is a “doctor”, yes, but he had probably fled up here to escape blood and bandages for a moment. He seems glad to see her, though, even as trace memories of their newly shared trauma plopped down onto his mattress. 

 “How are-“ he begins to examine and worry and she quickly motions away his fretting, plucking the book from his lap and thumbing through it. Some corners have fallen off with repetitive folding, thin columns of poetry framed in the paper by the yellowing of age. Eyes fixing on a line, at random, she reads;

  _“_ _My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.”_

 The line hangs in the air, and she’s happy to let it, even as he picks nervously at the quilt beneath them. With an appreciative nod, she hands it back to him. “I would’ve figured you for a Whitman type, honestly. I don’t know where you’ve been hiding all this baking and wine drinking and poetry reading all this time.”   He just shrugs, replying “I told Steve to read Walt Whitman.” With a grin, she pulls her left arm around his shoulder, hand drifting up to play with the hair at the nape of his neck. “Oh god. Of course you did.” She says with a low chuckle that seems to get stuck in the back of her throat. He tilts his head towards her, appreciative of the touch, eyes drifting shut. 

 “It’s easier for people to think I’m pure egghead, I guess. It’s a useful persona.” He picks at the peeling corners of the book’s spine. “But then again, the team doesn’t really need “the smart guy”, do they.” He’s tunneling towards another cloud of self-doubt, and it’s not something she enjoys watching. So instead, she takes his hand in hers. 

 “Bruce, despite how things may seem, this isn’t a boy band. Your…multitudes are appreciated. And not just the ones that involve the word ‘smash’.” He seems to concede a bit, both appreciative and cross with himself for revealing yet another string of insecurities. But Natasha knows that it’s better to let these things rest with her, rather than to let them continue to fester wherever he hid those thoughts. Pulling his head close to her shoulder, she lets him rest there. 

 “You okay?” He almost seems afraid to ask, scared that he had done a poor job of looking after her. “You slept so long, I wasn’t sure…”

 Her answer is a brief kiss, placed delicately at the very corner of his lips. Color blooms in the corners of his face, and she feels heat spread beneath her palm and the strong thump of his pulse against the pads of her fingers. His relief can be _felt_. She wonders if he thought she might forget, or write it off as a ‘heat of the moment’ decision. “I’m fine.” But even she can’t stop the brief shiver that tears through her, it really is cold up there and he straightens with concern, moving to wrap a blanket around her when she shakes her head. In a slow and deliberate motion, she brings the both of them down to the mattress where she wraps herself carefully around him, mindful of her wound. 

 He’s exceedingly warm, and she wonders if maybe he was always like this, just burning off a little more energy than the rest of them. He’s not offering any complaints, pulling up a fleecy brown blanket to their waists to warm their bare legs and feet. Her hand drifts across his back and he winces a bit, flinching away from her, not out of fear, but pain. She withdrew immediately. “I’m sorry, did-“ He shook his head, one hand rubbing gingerly at his shoulder. 

 “It ’s those worthless darts. I feel like a used pin cushion.” With a slight frown, she nods, hand returning to the spot behind his neck. She’d honestly forgotten about it, that botched attack that still left her puzzled. Shouldn’t Hulk have healed him? But he seems alright, willing to sink back down with her, and so she puts it aside for the moment.  

 After awhile, she’s content to just take things in; his warmth, the tangible sound of the falling snow, the vague scent of Irish Spring soap still clinging to his skin. But as she starts to warm, content seems to build into something else, something more urgent. _Something a little wicked, and probably unnecessary-_ and she wonders if he can feel her, tensing and hesitant, turning his face towards her, brows knitted with a question about to fall from his lips and she catches him in a kiss before he can say or do much of anything. The hands tucked beneath his sweatshirt, slip down from his chest, nails dragging ever so slightly, before reaching his hips, resting there, thumbs stroking gently against the skin. 

 She can keep them there all night, if he needs her to. His permission is obviously necessary, but his sense of comfort is even more important. Things could be ignored. Itches could be scratched. She could _survive_ without thisbut she’s willing to try. “You should rest more…” he murmurs breathlessly against her, even though he can’t seem to stop himself, lips pressed against hers. As she pulls away from him, her teeth graze his lower lip and it pulls a small, pleased noise from him. It’s a tiny little bit of something _more_ and she can see a painful yearning in him, and can _feel_ it. Her fingers dip beneath the waistband of his boxers and she watches his eyes, watches the internal debate. Patience is easy for her, she _knows_ how scared he is of this, of the dangerous (and monstrous) potential of allowing himself an uncontrolled minute of pleasure. “I can stop whenever you need me to…” she murmurs, one hand leaving his waist to push gently at the hair crowding his forehead. “You’ll be alright…I know you will…” 

 He nods, eyes shut tight. 

 With a smile he can’t see, she brushes her knuckles against his cheek before gently slipping his boxers from his hips, admiring him. He’s hard already, has been since the moment she pulled him in, but no one knew better than him that there was a difference between an urge and a release. If she can remove just a little bit of this fear, she thinks as she reaches out, still hesitant in her own right, one hand first stroking the soft inner skin of his thigh, just barely touching, knuckles brushing against his length and she catches the furrow in his brow, and the rough exhale of his breath. Not scared, but eager. Her hand closes around him, thumb swiping too gently against the head and it pulls another needy noise from his throat, louder this time. His eyes open, and she feels guilty when she searches for those traces of green. Instead, she smiles and leans back in to kiss him, as she settles into a gentle, but thorough motion. Her other hand keeps track of his heart, find pulse points as she strokes him, listening for any trace of fear. 

 When her name falls from his lips in a low gasp, she wishes for a second that she could push just that little bit harder, that she would love nothing more than to drive his body to the edge and back, but they had to take this step first. Not that she minds this, minds watching his eyes glitter, pupils blown wide, minds wringing more needful noise from him as she bites on his lower lip. Her hand picks up speed, now knowing that he could handle “gentle” to something more deliberate, quick strokes that make his thighs tremble, hips bucking beneath her as she teases her thumb against the head again. She can see the sense of concentration on his face, but realizes with glee, that he’s not trying to keep the Hulk away, but keep himself from tumbling over the edge too quickly. 

 He comes hard, mouth open but silent as he bears his head back, heels digging into the mattress. She strokes him through it, murmuring his name gently against his skin until she catches a faint whimper from him, too stunned to express how sensitive he was in any other language. Pulling away, she reached up, cupping his cheeks with her hands, kissing him until he finally opened his eyes, trying to regain focus as she smiled at him. It wasn’t a beatific smile, she was worried she might seem pitying or patronizing. There was pride, yes, but also heavy desire. “Natasha…” he mumbled, before giving way to a grin of his own. He sits up, gently (very, very gently) easing her onto the mattress, (more as to say, she allows him to do this, no act could be performed to her body without explicit permission). His motions are much less practiced and concise, but he eventually seems to come to a decision. 

 Her body is already humming as he parts layers of clothing, touching and kissing his way down. No slouch despite his…sabbatical, he takes his time. Contemplative and experimental, he mouths at her folds through her underwear first, all heat and breath and just that smallest bit of pressure, before he removed the garment entirely. Licking a delicate line against her opening, he took her pleased sigh as his cue to explore, thrusting his tongue up inside her with a rather unsubtle stroke that pulls a moan from her, low and honey-rich. Natasha finds out within a few seconds that beneath Bruce’s mild-mannered exterior hides a _dirty goddamn tease,_ exploring and tasting before he settled into soft circles against her clit. She resisted the urge to ask for more, because she was never the begging type. But he doesn’t make her wait, he is thorough, and after awhile, she begins to recognize the heat curling in her stomach. Her hand reaches out, clenching roughly in his hair.

 He reaches up, fingers pressing directly against her clit as he continues to gently kiss and lap beneath her and it pulls a keening sound from her, one of honest surprise, and for a moment, it’s exactly what she wanted, it’s _too much_ and it’s driving her crazy. Her hips twitch up into his mouth and he cradles the side of her hip with his free hand, humming against her. Her breath hitches, moaning with each exhale and comes with a quiet shudder, gasping tiny little breaths as he continues to lap at her until she can’t take it anymore, yanking his head up from her damp thighs and pulling herself close against him again. 

 They are both breathless and spent, and they remain that way for a long time until he thanks her quietly. Natasha chooses to say nothing, content with a kiss, content to lay with him, blanket pulled tight around their entwined form, as the snow seemed to bury them outside. Maybe someday there could be more, she hopes. Even if it took time, and more incremental steps. He’s observant, admiring her body, lips brushing over her collarbone, hands tracing the swell of her breasts beneath the slip of her shirt. If it were warmer, she would insist on undressing him wholly, just as an act of appreciation because they are new to each other, and even if he’d never admit it, there were things worth admiring. His broad shoulders, the coarse hair on his chest, his strong thighs, the rough planes of his hands. Bruce was too good at making himself small, ensuring that most of these details were lost to the casual observer. 

 This unfamiliarity thrilled her. Natasha was in the business of understanding bodies, mostly knowing their weaknesses, where to strike, where to break. She couldn’t deny that this knowledge made her an excellent lover, a point of pride she kept to herself until the moments she chose to share it. After awhile, his hands come to rest, one still splayed over the curve of her hip, and his breathing slows to something easy and gentle. 

 She watches his eyes slip shut, and there’s a twist of guilt there, a brief flash of concern on her face. He must be exhausted from watching over her. She sighs, delicately tracing his features with a finger tip. There’s a slight furrow on his brow, and she wanted to smooth it away, if it meant she could ensure he was peaceful. The hollows beneath his eyes look so dark in this light, and she swears she can see the faintest bruise on his lower lip, still kissed red and swollen.  As he settled further into sleep, the rose of his cheeks seemed to be fading away, and the sense of unease came back even stronger. She didn’t like that bliss could slip away from him this quickly. 

  _Time to go home,_ she reminded herself. If she could hold him here in this moment and stretch it out over time, she would, but the mission- because he may always be her mission- was to bring him home. To look after him and keep him safe. Whatever came after that was the reward of her success. They couldn’t stay here. And shouldn’t. Whoever had been after them likely wouldn’t grant them another day of solitude. They would just hit back again, harder and smarter. If she has to drag him, she will, but suspects she may not have to, because she’s good at her job. 

 The slight knot in his brow seems to turn into a full on frown for a moment, the worry line creasing up his forehead and she hears him exhale sharply, watched the sharp plane of his adam’s apple twitch as he seemed to swallow back something bitter. Reaching up to stroke his hair, she finds herself pushing away a few stray beads of sweat forming at his temple. Maybe it’s just the blankets doing their job a bit too well, but she swears he’s gotten warmer in the last few moments. She resists the urge to wake him immediately, so they could be on their way, but they both need the rest. He's fine, she tells herself, worried and over-tired. Sighing, she pulls him close to her, swearing to herself to get him moving the first available moment before falling into an uneasy sleep. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the referenced book: "Meditations in an Emergency" by Frank O'Hara


	6. no dawn, no day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She should have known better than to think either of them would wake up to something brighter, something better.

Through the fog of sleep, she felt a shift in the mattress, jarring, and sudden. In the dark, a panicked wheezing and coughing, the sound of stumbling and when she woke enough to reach out, her hand only found the pillow next to her, damp with sweat. “Bruce…?” Natasha felt drunk as she pulled herself up, lifting the lantern to cast light over the almost-pitch black cabin. Outside, the wind howled through the trees and her breath puffed visibly in the air. She didn't see him, but she could  _hear_ him, and each sound only served to worry her more. “Hey,” she called louder, pulling herself down the ladder as quickly as her limbs would allow. The cabin was freezing now, no fire to protect them from the elements, and she found herself fumbling with the thermostat through blurry eyes. “Bruce, talk to me.” Making her way to the kitchen, the light finally found him hunched over the sink.

As she feared, those painful sounds were coming from him, he seemed to be working overtime for a gasp of air that wasn’t coming to him. Her heart sank straight into her stomach. Cold fingers flipped up the light switch and he clenched his eyes shut, shrinking against the counter as if even that faint and dull overhead light was too much. 

 Was this a panic attack? In those kinds of moments, she knew that touch might have been the least helpful thing, and the last thing he needed was to be set off one way or the other. But that train of thought dissolved as he snapped back towards the sink, a deep, bronchial cough tearing through him. Something dark spattered against the walls, trailing red against the unwashed ceramic dishes and even she couldn't stop herself from gasping. Slowly, he turned toward her, a coppery smudge trailing from his lips.

“Natasha...?” He mumbled, eyes fluttering and unfocused, and hearing him did nothing to calm her. It was a plea for help and she was simply _stuck_. Another cough seemed to split him nearly in half, and as she finally reached out to steady him, he pulled away, one hand pressed tight against his forehead as he tried to make his way to the couch. 

 He collapsed before she could catch him. 

 She’s on her knees in seconds, trying to take a deep breath as she pulled him into her arms, resting his head in her lap, pushing the sweat-matted hair away from his face. She could feel fever in every inch of him, and passing her hand against his forehead felt like a brush with a hot stove.

“I’m sorry…” he managed, pressing back against her palm, searching for relief. Shaking her head, Natasha smiled, trying to steady herself, because the whole of her was shaking and terrified and she didn't need to make it any worse than it already was. “Shhhh…” she whispered, thumb stroking against his cheekbone. “Why should you be sorry…” His eyes were hazy and he swallows hard, trying to focus himself, and she knew she shouldn’t be letting him talk. The word _radioactive_ flashed in the back of her mind, CPR wasn't an option. "Thought I was just tired. Woke up and it..it h-hurts.” 

Exhaling sharply, she nodded and held him close. _Focus. You saw this coming and did nothing, now focus, and help him._

 Glancing down, she lifted the hem of his t-shirt with a frown, catching a glimpse of a dark patch on his stomach, and some slight coaxing revealed something black and insidious running through the veins beneath his skin. It was creeping up around his neck, too, and she tried to move him gently so she could inspect his back, but even through his clothes, her touch wrenched a weak cry of protest from his throat. “Okay, okay-“ she muttered, returning to cradle him there as carefully as she could. “Bad idea. Let’s…” Sweat bloomed on her own forehead and bile rose in her throat, overwhelmed by how much she _couldn’t_ do for him in that moment, but she swallowed it back with a nod. “C’mon, let’s get you in bed.” 

 It was a miracle that she could get him up and moving, taking on most of his weight as he stumbled with her. How _smart_ , she thought, recalling Hulk’s wounded keening as HYDRA pelted him with a volley of darts, to do it this way, to hurt him like this. Hulk was unavoidable and indestructible, but Bruce…

Natasha was not a stranger to wounds or poisons or illness, and this isn’t the first or last time she’ll ever be under siege with an incapacitated partner, but this was different. Even in their deepest covers, Natasha and Clint could rely on an extraction. Even with her seemingly infinite skill, there was a safety net. A quinjet sent by Fury even despite her insistence that she could finish the mission. But now? She had a jeep and five feet of snow.

 She settled him down onto the bed, using a pocket knife to cut away his shirt to avoid the pain of jostling him about, and pulled in a chair from the kitchen. Her movements were almost robotic, quick and to the point. She took a moment to relight the fire, and pulled on her clothes, a gun tucked in her back pocket, knives holstered against her belt. Glancing down at the blood-spattered dishes, she gave herself an extra few seconds to simply _breathe_ before she filled a bowl with cold water and grabbed a wash cloth, returning to sit beside him.  _I've done this before_ , she thought, and it that was the truth. Dozens of missions gone wrong in some way, and she'd taken care of Clint and Maria and Phil and Sharon and Clint again (his propensity for injury could not be stressed) and prayed that Bruce couldn't be too terribly different. Listening to him breathe was an exercise in composure; it was wet and forced and ragged and she could hear blood stirring in his lungs. How could she even think to fix that?

 Tilting his face towards her, she dabbed gently at the dried blood at the corner of his mouth, careful not to get any of it on her skin, before pressing the damp cloth against his forehead. The heat seemed to be eating away at him, and she knew she couldn't do anything beyond symptom management but if she could make it better, even for a second, it was worth trying. “Plan’s still the same, you know,” she murmured, turning the cloth over to keep it cool. The other side was already warm, almost useless. Like a teacup full of water thrown on a house fire. “We’ll both be home soon.” Because Bruce was still Bruce, even out of his wits, he had to be difficult. 

 “You keep saying _home_... like you know what that is.” He said, a feeble cough shaking him for a second, and she shouldn’t be shocked when she catches blood on his heat-cracked lips, but forced back her fear with a quick intake of breath.

“ _Stop_.” She urged him gently, but he persisted. “There's no home...there's no 'your home' and there's no 'my home'...” Pinching lightly at the bridge of her nose, she sighed. Her idea of home was never exactly a place, and maybe he didn't realize that. Maybe someday she could explain it to him, that home was a warped concept but not one she was willing to give up on just yet. But she couldn't blame his doubt, he'd been running for so long, he'd stopped thinking about the concept altogether. “What is…all this once we get there?” His questions didn't land lightly, but she couldn't say they weren't fair.  “It doesn’t matter.” She concluded, and as she removed the cloth for a moment, she caught him frowning. “Of course it does.” He mumbled back, something in her hardens. Bruce does this when he’s scared. He says dumb things, thinking it might give him enough distance to slip away. Wringing cold water out of the cloth, she pressed it back against his hot skin, and the relief is enough to shut him up. 

 “I don’t know why we were all so insistent on going it alone after New York. And now with SHIELD gone…” she sighs, and her free hand finds his, squeezing it gently. “I don’t know what this is, and you don’t either, but I’m not letting you get away again.” 

"...You might not have a choice." 

“ _Don’t_. Don’t you dare, you’re just sick.” Natasha doesn’t allow herself to sound anything less than matter-of-fact, as she ran the cloth in careful sweeps down his neck, stroking her fingers through his hair as she combed it back. Leaning down, she met his gaze before pressing a kiss to his forehead.  _God, he's burning..._ “You’re not going anywhere. And you know I’m not the only one who’s going to make sure of that.” She reached out, stroking her knuckles against his cheek. “Sorry to disappoint, but you're gonna get better.” Her jaw ached from trying to smile reassuringly, and one glance at his face and she knew he didn't really believe her. He nodded with a labored sigh and she could see a flash of pain drifting unchecked over his expression, and his hold on her hand tightening considerably. She didn't let go. 

 When it seems to ebb away, she stood up up, gently clasping his bicep “Turn on your side, let me see…I won’t touch, I promise.” Gently coaxing him to turn towards the wall, she took one look at the spider web of veins crawling across his back and forced back a wave of overwhelming nausea. Bruises spread from each tiny puncture wound, and his skin is like a watercolor painting, grey bleeding into yellow bleeding into purple bleeding into red. Wrapping her shaking hand around her mouth, Natasha spends a half-second in white hot panic, before letting it pass, allowing him to lay back down on the bed. Pursing her lips in frustration, she casually cleared away the tight feeling in her throat, pretending to take his pulse while ignoring her own rabbit heart. She wanted to say something, the kind of in-the-trenches 'it's not that bad' talk that people with her training were used to, but she couldn't find the words, or even rehearse them in her head. It was that bad, and Bruce wouldn't be fooled by it. 

 Quietly excusing herself, She perched in front of the fire outside, sitting anxiously as she held her phone to her ear, increasingly frustrated as it rang and rang rang… 

  _“This is Tony. If you have this number, it must be important. Keep it short.”_ Then the loud beep.

 “Call me back. Now.” 

 Knowing that Tony could be trusted with many things, but that listening to his voicemail was probably not one of them, she sent several messages to JARVIS’s server, much more confident in the AI’s ability to deliver the news no matter what Tony was otherwise engaged in. Turning towards the windows, she looked to the darkness outside, feeling more helpless than she had in the longest time. She knew she should return to Bruce, who is Scared and Hurting, but allowing herself a few moments, she stared ahead at the crisp and untouched snow, quietly furious as it continued to fall and build, making it harder for her to plan her exit strategy. Snow-mobiles were out, and driving would be difficult.

She was about to turn away when she caught a faltering dark spot emerging from the wall of pine trees that surrounded them. 

 In what felt like seconds, she was out the door, chasing after it, gun drawn. The air bites at her skin, and the snow threatens to swallow her entirely but she slogs through it. Luckily, her target isn’t moving very quickly at all, and it’s not long before she’s got her arm wrapped around someone’s throat. Throwing the figure into the snow, she stalks over, turning it’s shoulder with her boot and aiming her pistol at the half-dead HYDRA soldier beneath her. His face was obscured by snow, nearly consumed by frost bite.

 “Please.” His words rise into the air with a puff of warm breath. “Kill me.” Her eyes narrowed and she knelt down beside him, holstering the gun in favor of the knife at her hip. 

 “What did you do to him?” she asked, somewhat numb. “Why poison a man who can’t die?” The soldier struggled to respond, shivering too violently to get the answer past his blackened lips. But she still detects a hint of satisfaction in his eyes, when he realizes that part of their plan had worked. 

 “T-two fold serum…n-neutralizes the monster long e-enough to c-compromise Banner.” She froze in her place. That couldn’t be possible. There couldn’t be a way to ensure that Hulk could stay dormant long enough to kill Bruce, it just didn’t _work_ that way. “Was there an antidote?” she asked, even though she already knows the answer. It’s an excuse to be cruel, perhaps, but she’s not about to be merciful. Not with Bruce in so much pain. No one is watching, and no one will know. 

 With a nod, she played with her knife for a moment before wordlessly slipping the blade up inside the man’s stomach. Steam rose from the wound as blood rushed out into the snow. It might take hours for him to bleed out. She supposes that eventually she might feel some remorse for this, but returning back to Bruce’s side, she found herself once again singularly focused. 

 He seemed to be sleeping now, poorly and fitfully, but resting all the same, which gave her an uneasy sense of relief, a moment to calm herself. Patting away the sweat on his forehead, she settled in beside him, his hand clasped loosely in hers. “Hulk,” she murmured quietly, lifting his hand to her lips and letting them linger there for a moment. “I know you’re not the listening type, but if you can hear me…” she shook her head with a sigh. “Help him.”

 _Because I can’t_. _Not here, not like this._

But she’s talking to herself, one way or the other, and she prepares for the long night ahead. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to add a thank you to everyone who's been reading and commenting, especially if you're still here after my chapter-long H/C spasm, you are rad and I appreciate you.


	7. meditations in an emergency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's thoughts on: peacekeeping, friendship, board games, blood poisoning, etc.

_You in there?_

  _Hey. I’m talking to you._  

 He wishes he could say that in this state, he couldn’t feel much of anything. There’d been plenty of times when consciousness was an honest burden to bear, sore and weak and skin alive and itching with radioactive fire and hating every second that required him to be awake and moving, but Bruce, being somewhat known as a smart man, couldn’t say he wouldn’t welcome that experience in an instant, the intimate feeling of being used and discarded, for _this_. 

 So he kept calling. Reaching out to the Other Guy in a way he had only done a few times. (Pleading, really. Begging.) There’s no response. No irritated growling, or even the vague sense that Hulk was ignoring him on purpose.

 His breath audibly rattled in his lungs, like the faint crinkling of cellophane, and he resisted the urge to cough every single second, because he knew Natasha was there, listening as she spoke softly to him, little quiet words of comfort, anything she thought might keep him connected to this side of the world. The blood is only a fraction worse than the heat, there’s no part of him that isn’t burning. Even as he felt closer and closer to drowning, he struggled in vein to keep everything contained- because he could _kill_ her or _contaminate_ her or _infect_ her- any manner of horrible thing. 

 “They’ll be here soon, okay?” 

 He doesn’t respond, he _can’t_ really _,_ everything is focused on containment. He can do it, he thinks-

 She hushes him softly as she holds a towel to his lips, gasping as blood fills his mouth. Even if he could open his eyes, he couldn’t bear to look at her. 

  _Any time now, big guy_. 

 This is all too new. And too soon. And for once, he didn’t want it to be over. 

 Is he “in love”? Is she? Could two traumatized people be this very certain kind of compatible? He could find out, wants to. The fact of wanting _something_ is a change, rather than just accepting everything cast in front of him, deserved or otherwise. He wants this too much, even though that surprises him. If he weren’t in agony, he might have taken this as a sign of progress. Years ago, if Bruce had been able to see the exit as clearly as he could now…

  _Hulk?_

 “Stay with me.” 

  _Come on. Please._

 “Bruce…?”

 

_Hulk, I’m dying._

 ———————————————————————————————

 To be fair, Tony had kind of been expecting this. 

 Not _this_ , obviously, not this very serious and terrible scenario JARVIS sent thundering down from the sky, but ever since he’d heard that Romanoff was off to retrieve Banner from whatever sadness shack he had made for himself, he’d been quietly (for a change) waiting for the other giant, green foot to drop. The messages come sailing into the garage around 3 am as Rhodey tries for what must be the 40th time in their very long friendship to get him to play (and understand and care about) RISK. He’s being crushed, pushed off to the furthest corner of the world by Rhodey’s little blue pieces. Pepper had long gone to bed, her yellow pieces scattered to the side along with the empty Thai takeout containers. Even as Rhodey yawned and stretched like an absurd cat, his eyes seemed weirdly focused, and Tony could tell that he wasn’t going to give up until Tony’s small but strong hold on Micronesia was all but erased. 

 “Alright, c’mon, put me out of my misery already.” He said blearily, one hand half-heartedly rifling through a bag of dried fruit. His post-heart surgery diet would be the absolute death of him. Rhodey only smiled and continued to strategize. 

 “I get the sense that you’re not into this.” He said, rolling the dice while silently planning Tony’s ultimate destruction. 

 Tony huffed and crammed some foamy-tasting apple slices into his mouth. “You’re just mad that you never worked up the nerve to ask Rogers to play while he was here for the fitting.” Rhodey rolled his eyes, casting one of the yellow soldiers towards Tony’s face, which only got a laugh out of him. “It was for the best anyway, it would have lost all it’s appeal when you explained to him that we boiled decades of traumatic wartime experience down to a strategic board game.” His friend’s expression could best be described as “pouting”, not that it diminished his total destruction of Tony’s small red army. “Try Settlers of Catan, that’s much more dweeby and wholesome and democratic, he’d love it-“

  _Sir, I have several messages from Agent Romanoff._

 Tony and Rhodey frowned upwards in tandem. “JARVIS, it’s not “agent” anymore, buddy, remember? SHIELD shit the bed-“

  _They seem to be of a highly urgent nature, sir, concerning Doctor Banner. Shall I read them?_

 Tony stood up and distractedly waved a hand. “No, I’ll-“ He could only imagine what Romanoff was about to tell him, and hearing those words in JARVIS’s placid tones seemed a little…inappropriate. Downloading them directly onto his tablet, his eyes scanned the words “attack”, “poisoned”, “compromised” as Rhodey rifled through the jacket slung across the chair next to him. “You have five voicemails.” He said delicately. Tony reread her last message over and over, trying to wrap his head around what she was telling him; _The Hulk can’t help him_. How was that possible? 

 For a moment, guilt and anger put up a fight within him, a dueling war of _I shouldn’t have let him go_ and _Banner you shithead what were you thinking_ \- and luckily, he has Rhodey there to bring him out of it. Tony swallowed back the lump in his throat, and glanced over at his friend, who already seems to know what he’s about to ask. 

 “Those recommissioned quinjets are fully inspected and operational, right?” he said, already thinking about what he needs, what _they’ll_ need. Rhodey nods, abandoning his world conquest in favor of pulling together the flight coordinates of Natasha’s location. “As of yesterday.” 

 “Good, the last thing I need is the DoD up my ass about renovating SHIELD’s toys. Feel like breaking the sound barrier?” 

 The urge is there, to pile into his best suit and take off towards Washington, a one man army, something he might have done a few months ago, but the flight is simply too _long_ and he’s not likely to save his friends if the suit gives out somewhere over Idaho. This time, he lets Rhodey take the helm, Iron Man and War Machine tucked neatly away within the repurposed quinjet- just in case- and it gives him the time to wrap his head around what he’s staring in the face. He tells (assures, really) Natasha that they are en route, and she responds with pictures- low quality in the dim light- and it takes an extraordinary amount of willpower not to nervously void his stomach when he sees the web of polluted veins snaking their way across his friend’s body, not because the condition itself disgusted him- but because of vivid (and selfish, he thinks) flashes back to his Palladium Days, when his own body had viciously rejected him. 

 It wasn’t a pain he wanted anyone else to experience. 

 The pictures are meant to be referential, so that Tony could start piecing together some sort of miracle fix to this, but he manages to catch other things within them, things that certainly don’t calm him down. The pain etched into Bruce’s expression, blood spattered onto Natasha’s wrist…Worst of all, Tony knows that this is well and truly his weak spot- The human body was a pile of gross and frustrating hurdles. There was nothing complex about this, it couldn't be tinkered with, there was no troubleshooting. Curing himself had involved _inventing a new element_ , and looking at the photos again, he doubted Bruce had that kind of time. 

 He thinks about Bruce packing his bags, content to be dropped at the nearest airport. 

  _“I’ll be fine.”_ He’d reassured. _“There’s just a lot I want to see. It’s been a long time since I’ve had the freedom to do that.”_ How does one say no to that? At the time, it’d seemed silly to worry. No one was chasing Bruce, (correction: no one without a death wish was chasing Bruce), and even Pepper had gently reminded Tony that the last thing Bruce needed was to be pinned down, one way or the other, that alone time would probably do him some good. _We don’t get to stop. We’ll never get to stop._ In that moment, fatigue seemed to crush him. At what point in his life _would_ Bruce get to call it quits, without fear of attack or reprisal? When did Natasha get to quit, when did Steve get to quit? When they died? When giving their best wasn’t good enough, and the world went dark for good? His hand went to the familiar spot, where the ring of scar tissue used to circle the arc reactor and he feels a little cold when he runs his hand over the flat expanse of skin. 

 There had to be a better way, he thought. People like him, people like Bruce…they couldn’t hold up the world forever. He could make the Iron Man utterly perfect in every way, and Hulk could literally break the earth in half if he tried hard enough, but at the end of the day, their bodies were fallible, and their fears were too real and too many to count. 

  _Help Bruce first, solve world peace later._

 Rhodey navigates his way through turbulence like he’s mad at it, and if they were paying any sort of attention, they’d know they were breaking a speed barrier and probably several air traffic laws. They call to each other every so often, suggesting things, like keeping an eye on HYDRA’s movements, knowing they’d be interested in the vulnerability of Natasha’s position. Messages are sent, some to Hill, who can pinpoint HYDRA cells faster than lightning, some to Pepper, so she can shake up the Avengers Tower medical unit, a work in progress, letting them prepare for the situation on hand. 

 Natasha sends one more message, and Tony was never one to discern tone very well, but it still sends a chill up the length of his spine. 

  _Hurry. We’re losing him._

 


	8. starting from zero, got nothing to lose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In terms of rescues, this one isn't as dashing or daring as Tony first envisioned.

_“I’m dying.”_

  _Betty rolled her eyes and rubbed gently at her boyfriend’s shoulders as he coughed himself practically face first into the lab bench. “You’re not dying,” she said, leaning in and pressing a kiss to the spot behind his ear. “You’re-mmmm-“ she paused, grimacing and wiping at her mouth. “Sweaty and gross.” Her hand returned to the small of his back and remained there. “But not dying.” She loved Bruce to the very pit of her, but man, could he dramatize._

  _He remained like that for a second, wheezing weakly, before turning around to face her, and she couldn’t help but giggle, he looked so grumpy and miserable, and pulled him to her with a sympathetic smile. On a normal week, on any other day, she’d already have wrestled him into bed, because in the case of Bruce Banner vs. Bronchitis, he was easily defeated , but now even her best intentions weren’t going to be of much use. Not when Thunderbolt was involved._

  _“Reschedule the presentation.”_

  _“I can’t.” He mumbled, head tucked against her shoulder and her hand runs through the mess of curls, tangling and untangling damp grey-streaked locks. She huffed quietly. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, honey, but you can barely breathe and you have a fever…?”  He pulled away, and she winced as he seemed to split his lungs into fourths. He didn’t seem deterred, reaching over and pulling out a shoebox of assembled items from their medicine cabinet; dayquil, throat spray, some awful “therapeutic” tea that he’d once bought in a fit of being into clean living and abandoned one discarded teabag and a pitcher of void-black coffee later._

  _“I’ll get through it.” He said with a shrug, pretending to look at his notes while the world spun around him. A few moments later; “What’s he gonna say if I skip out?”_

  _With a sigh, she met his eyes. “The same thing he’s gonna say if you don’t.”_

  _When it came to her father, Betty saw no point in lying. That could never help him. Had the chance for Bruce to advance in his field not been so great, she never would have allowed it. Even now, she was tempted, seeing him so run down and burnt out, shrunken in on himself, clinging to the little pieces of confidence he had, to try and call the whole thing off. Gently pulling the notes from his hands, she smiled reassuringly. “I’ll tell him it was my idea. That I insisted. Which I am, by the way. Insisting.” When his posture softens, she takes that as his yes, grinning and kissing the tip of his nose._

  _Her arm wrapped gently around his waist, she walked with him out of the lab, through the empty Culver halls, out into the dark and silent parking lot-_

 

 

—————— I’m dying.

 His breath comes in shallow little gasps, sweat running past the bruised skin of his eyelids, and when he opens them, he’s nearly blinded. “Betty…?” he calls out into the empty space around him, and someone’s hand slips into his, and no less than a second later, he squeezes it like a vice grip, back arching as jolts of pain shot through him. They seemed to hit like lighting, one hot strike that branched through every little vein in his body. 

 He knows its not her, that it won’t (and by proxy, _can’t_ ) be her ever again, but looking up into Natasha’s jade green eyes, seeing that same concern (and maybe that same affection?), his brain does the math for him, albeit incorrectly. 

 “I should have married you…” 

 She squeezed his hand back, shaking her head, muttering insistently that he needs to rest, and for the first time, her eyes avoid his, looking away to anything she can, the ceiling, their conjoined hands… She tries to busy herself, using her free hand to wipe at his forehead with a lukewarm washcloth.  “I wasted everything.” His chest heaves uncertainly, and the taste of copper stains the roof of his mouth. Suddenly, her eyes snap back to his, a hard gaze that manages to pull him out inch by inch of his 11th hour delusions.

 “No you didn’t.” She sighs and closes her eyes, and even in this state, he can see how tired she is. Bring his hand up, she presses it to her forehead, concentrating intensely, a gesture that brought to mind watching his Aunt do the rosary, praying for all the saints and sinners of the misbegotten Banner family. After moment, she takes a deep breath, and seems to straighten herself out, mute and resolved. “I’m not letting you talk like this, not even close.” 

 He wants to fight back, to _yell_ at her because of her selective understand of Why He is a Bad Man, but he can’t find the strength to form the words. She doesn’t understand and he can’t kiss her again unless she _knows_ about this, about all the love he’d squandered before and would probably squander again. 

 About the abandoned engagement ring in his one bedroom apartment, likely seized and thrown away by the Department of Defense. 

 Another half-second later, it’s amazing how little this all matters as he bears his head back into the mattress, shaking like he’d touched a livewire, eyes rolling back as a bloody foam seeps through his clenched jaw. 

 ———————————————————————————————

 Tony doesn’t know what he expects to find when he enters the cabin. Landing had been hell, even by Rhodey’s high standards, and taking off would be no picnic. Time was not on their side, Maria had already dug up a HYDRA convoy circling them like sharks a few miles out and he didn’t doubt that they could fight them off, but this was a rescue mission, not a firefight. It required more delicacy. Rhodey watched the door, his own gun drawn and ready while Tony took a few more tentative steps forward. 

 “Hello?” he called, disconcerted by the darkness of the rooms. “Romanoff?” 

 No response, but the muffled sound of coughing is enough of a clue. 

 Pushing through the door, he finds an empty bed, and Tony has to swallow back the nausea when he see’s Bruce’s place framed by sporadic blood spatter. A red-soaked, ruined washcloth sits in a ziplock bag on the bedside table. He’s so jarred by the scene, hands clenching, mouth dry, when he finally catches on to the sound of running water from the next room. Turning the corner, he finds both of them sprawled out in the bathtub, Natasha cradling Bruce from behind, as the shower ran tepid water down on the both of them. She didn’t seem to realize he was there at first, mumbling something soft into Bruce’s ear, soothing her hand down the side of his face. Tony couldn’t tell if he was listening, or even awake, and he finds himself frozen to the spot. 

 Veins showed through his skin, livid and discolored, like someone had traced the lines of a map against him, snaking up his arms and back, and it was easy to see that whatever this was, it was spreading. Tucked against Natasha’s chest, Tony could see how pale he’d gotten, his skin was almost _grey_ and there was no color to him at all, save for the sunken, bruised patches around his eyes. It’s a plain sight, he thinks. This is what a dying man looks like. Finally, Natasha’s eyes meet his, just for a moment, before returning to Bruce’s face, looking for signs of a response. 

 “He’s running so hot,” she said numbly, gently tapping the side of his face to see if he woke. Nothing, save for Bruce’s faint shaking and uneven breathing. She settled again, soaked through to the bone, and looked up to Tony with vacant eyes. She shrugged, as if very briefly considering resignation. “His fever’s too high. He, um…” She swallowed hard on a lump in her throat. “He had a seizure. Mild enough…I guess, but…this  was the only thing I could think of. Drawing a bath would have taken too long.” 

 For once, he has nothing funny to say. 

 “Alright. Up and at ‘em, we left the car running.”  He kneels down beside them, reaching out tentatively, fingers curling in as he tried to figure out how to move Bruce without making it worse, as if it _could_ get any worse. Glancing over at Natasha, he bit on the inside of his cheek. She looked absolutely wrecked, with under-eye circles the size of cities, tired and defeated, skin sallowed and unhealthy. She shook her head. “I can’t carry him. I barely got him in here.” Tony shrugged breezily, knowing his friend just did not have the last leg of this fight in her and that he’d have to carry this (literally, it seemed) over the finish line. 

 “Luckily for you, Cap has a way of putting arm day back on everyone’s agenda.” 

 And _there_ it was. Maybe not his best attempt, but hey, he was distracted. 

 It takes some awkward maneuvering and unseemly grunting, and at one point, Bruce’s leg slips free, ankle smacking against the side of the bathtub, but Tony gets him into a bridal carry. The irony is not lost on him, although he’s certainly being more cautious and gentle than Hulk was, but as he made his way out into the dark living room he thinks about falling out of the sky and being caught. There’s a debt to be repaid here, and he’s not about to let it pass him by. He nods to Rhodey, who’s looking at Bruce with quiet sympathetic horror, that they were ready to leave and in less than five minutes, the loading doors are open, engines prepped. Settling Bruce onto the couch, he wraps a blanket around him to keep the elements away, while Natasha pulled on dry clothing. 

 “Hill says HYDRA isn’t far behind.” Glancing toward the bedroom, Tony catches a glimpse of her heavily bandaged shoulder. “…You feel like engaging? We can give them the slip without trouble.” After a long silence, she wandered into the living room, her own duffle bag slung over her arm while she handled Bruce’s leather satchel and his own travel bag. “Not much fight in me today.” She finally said, and Tony could see the struggle to admit that, that it was more painful to her than any ordinary wound. She glanced over at Bruce and sighed. “He won’t last if we get pinned down.” And that was the bitter truth; as much as they wanted to grind HYDRA into the dirt, they simply could not afford to lose time. Tony nodded. “They’re not going anywhere.”

 The quinjets are amazingly equipped for their compact size, and Tony made sure his came with all the extra accessories (with a few modifications of his own). The most useful (on this night, at least) addition was the miniature med bay, the fold-out child of a bed and a gurney with a deployable IV unit and enough first aid supplies to run a small hospital. Once settled inside, Natasha seems to perk up a bit, stored memories of missions flooding back to her, and when she starts rooting through storage and pulls out different bags and drips and needles, Tony openly admits his relief. She snaps on a pair of powdery blue gloves and carefully hangs the bags before gently inspecting Bruce’s arm, trying to find a useable vein in the dark nest of soured ones crowding the crook of his arm. She slips them in with ease. “This should help the pain,” she said, taping one of them in place before slipping in another. “And this one should deal with the fever…” As she chucks everything into the biohazard bin, a glaring reminder snapped into his brain. 

 “Did you have gloves when you were…?” Natasha glanced up at him and shrugged, very casual. A little too casual. 

 “I looked through his kit, but he’d run out. And I couldn’t leave him like that.” Tony just stared for a moment, and she wasn’t about to succumb to a mindless panic. Turning back to the cabinets, she did a bit more digging and produced a white pill bottle. He squinted at the label. SHIELD-issue potassium iodide tablets, standard treatment for minor radiation exposure. “Is that gonna be enough?” She looked at the bottle before opening it, shaking out two into her palm. She handed him one and dry swallowed her own. “I guess we’ll find out.” 

 ———————————————————————————————

 

It takes a frankly alarming amount of coercion to convince Natasha to sleep, or even to get her to take her eyes away from Bruce for more than a few moments. She waits until she can confirm that the drugs are working, when Bruce doesn’t look like he’s in agony with every breath he takes and his temperature finally drifts down from something other than scalding. JARVIS is monitoring the few vitals he’s able to record without hospital machines and everything settles into an uneasy quiet. Tony settled down next to Rhodey in the copilot’s seat with a heavy sigh. 

 “…How’s he doing’?” Rhodey doesn’t look away from the endless sky ahead of them, but Tony detected his concern easily. Bruce had been exceedingly reserved around Rhodey when they’d first met, respectful and polite, but more painfully shy than usual and it took him an ungodly unobservant amount of time to realize that Bruce must have felt like an enormous intruder into this tiny little family Tony had cultivated. Rhodey being Rhodey, does not possess these keen anxieties and knew that it was much better to befriend the new Hulk roommate rather than let the man think he hated him and made attempts to talk to Bruce about literally anything he thought might pull the scientist out a bit. It finally worked one rainy afternoon, when Rhodey caught Bruce listening to Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” in his lab and in front of Tony and God, talked for at least twenty minutes about how they had worn her album out to the point of oblivion. There were more shared loves to be found, especially when it came to table-top board games, and had Bruce stuck around, they might have found even more in common. 

 Tony shrugged and pushed away his hair, damp from nervous flop-sweat. He’d been staring at Bruce for twenty minutes, terrified that he would flicker away any second and the bedside shtick was too much for him, especially when there was nothing for him to _do._ “I don’t know. Either I’ll figure this out and wring his neck for this later, or…” _Or he’ll die of toxic shock or fever-induced brain damage or if he’s really lucky, he’ll choke to death on his own blood-_

 “There’s no ‘or’” Rhodey said quietly. “Don’t make it an option.” Tony’s mouth hangs open in anxious protest but Rhodey continues. “When I looked for you out in the desert, everyone told me that I was wasting my time. They said I’d be lucky if I found any trace at tall.” Tony rubs at his chest, and Rhodey catches the anxious tell, but persists. “I didn’t even think about that. I couldn’t. There was no “or”, I was gonna save you. Just like you're gonna save him.” 

 Staring into the void ahead, Tony can do nothing but nod. 

 


	9. they say we're buried far, just like a distant star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The clock ticks closer to midnight and Steve is a good friend.

At first, Steve thought the message was a mistake. Maybe two messages merged themselves together (if that was a thing that could happen) to form something nonsensical, at least in his mind. He got updates from the team from time to time, about new tech, new uniforms, various covert complaints about each other, usually ending in “can you talk some sense into ____.” The occasional message from Thor, composed with the imprecision of the large-fingered. But never this kind of message. Never a “come home now before it’s too late” message. 

 They all knew that he and Sam had been hot on HYDRA’s trail, trying to piece together what little (microscopic) trace Bucky managed to leave behind, so far, exceedingly unsuccessfully, and discouragement nipped at their heels like relentless, angry dogs. Sam, god bless him, seemed to approach each day with a renewed sense of ‘maybe this is it’ but Steve wondered how much longer that might last, how much longer he would be able to keep Sam by his side, fully engaged. The search could be obsessive, and Steve feared the day he went too far, and treated him like an accessory, rather than a partner. The only silver lining to this message is giving Sam a reprieve, a chance to reconnect with his own world. Sam being Sam, asks what he can do, who he can call. 

 Steve doesn’t know what to do. So he just asks for time. Sam hides his relief well. 

 His return to the tower goes almost entirely unnoticed by anyone other than JARVIS, who wordlessly allows him to pass through until he reaches the meeting room, the epicenter where Tony is arguing with an Asian woman over a video chat, not understanding much between ‘intravenous tissue repair’ and ‘hemorrhages’ but none of it sounds good. On the other side of the table, Col. Rhodes and (former) Deputy Director Hill try to quietly discuss security measures over Tony’s quasi-theatrical frustration- and at the end of the table, Natasha, nursing a cup of coffee, staring into the middle distance. She’s the only one to notice his arrival and Steve notices a very faint uptick in the corners of her lips. He smiles back. 

 “Cho? Cho. Another time, another day- yes, but I am telling you I _do not have the time_ to wait on that theory to play-“ Tony finally catches him out of the corner of his eye and Steve sees stored tension in his shoulders disappearing in a slump- _Why? I’m the least useful person here…_ he thinks as Tony swallows hard. “I’ll call you back, you’ll uh…you’ll hear from me either way.” The heat of the argument dissolves in a second. The woman, Cho, quietly wishes him luck. “Hey Captain.” Tony mumbles as he pushes past and heads off towards the general direction of what Steve knew to be the medical wing. 

 He sits down next to Natasha with a sigh. An abandoned box of donuts sits near her, and he drags it in his direction, perusing it’s sugar-glazed contents before realizing, like everyone else, he has no appetite. “Hi.” She breathes out flatly, drinking her coffee, and grimacing at the taste. Steve chews on his lip for a moment, unsure of where to start. He was ready to charge into this like he did anything else, but he was instantly absorbed into the quiet kind of despair that gnawed at everyone else. There’s no one to fight here. They are losing without slipping a punch or running out of ammo. “Hi.” He feebly returns. 

 “You came quick.” She says, and Steve would have thought there was surprise in her voice if everything else about her didn’t seem a little lifeless. “Search must not be going so well, then.” She eyes him carefully. “I’m sorry.” He just shrugged- yes, the search was a disaster and this was not the kind of distraction he’d been (very very deep down secretly) hoping for, and Steve idly wonders what he would have done, if he was staring Bucky in the face and gotten the same message- None of his answers are flattering. He pushes it away. “How much do you know?” she asked him quietly. 

 “Only what Tony told me. HYDRA ambush. You were wounded. Banner’s…he’s, uh…down. For now.” She can tell he doesn’t want to say any of the words- sick, poisoned, compromised- and her lips purse incredulously for a minute. “I told Sam to take some time off. He offered to come, but I figured…some degree of removal from all this…” There’s guilt in his shrug and she nods. “You did the right thing.” She says. “It’s hard to take time away when you think you can…help.” The word seems bitter in her mouth. 

 “I should have taken a vacation.” She says with a slight smirk. “Everyone told me to, but ever since we pulled the trigger on SHIELD…” she reaches into the box and starts pulling a jelly donut apart with her fingers, taking a ginger bite. “You can’t micromanage the kind of damage we did, even for the right reasons. You can’t undo a blast radius, but I thought if I could just pull someone out of it, someone who could really stand to get hurt now that we spilled all their secrets…” Steve frowns for a second, travel fatigue making it hard to immediately connect dots. “I think I just brought more trouble to his door.” She concludes with a sigh.

 “Banner?” Steve asks, his frown softening. He swallowed back the lump on his throat. “From what I was told, HYDRA would have showed up with or without you being there. They’re gunning for all of us now, you saved his life.” He says, trying to firmly hold her eye contact. She just shakes her head. “And a _fine_ job I did…” She shoves her thumb into the sticky purple jelly center of the donut, leaving it there, picking at the thing but never eating it. “He’s dying. Did Tony tell you that?” It’s hard to say yes. Finally, he manages a nod, even as the words “That’s not possible” leave his mouth. 

 “It’s not possible, but it’s still happening. They’re still two steps ahead of us and Bruce is paying for it.” He can feel her frustration and the general unpleasant irony of it all, even though Steve and Bruce don’t talk much, they know a lot about each other, just by proxy of being sort of awful mirrors. Bruce knows all about Erskine’s research, about how he created Captain America because as far as Steve can tell, _all_ scientists know it, in the back of their heads as a sort of fairy tale as they learn to navigate moral pathways in scientific research. Steve, admittedly, knows about Bruce out of guilt. Turns out Coulson had his story backwards, Bruce was never trying to replicate the super soldier formula, but rather trying to create biological radiation resistance. To make people immune to the world’s worst weapons. And without his consent or knowledge, the Department of Defense had folded his work into an outdated and flawed Erskine copycat serum. Bruce had been under such immense pressure- but had been so confident in his own work- that he tested the serum on himself. And one Hulk later, Bruce was the Army’s most wanted as they tried to cover up their own mistake. Steve carried guilt that Bruce never asked him to, and he wonders if it showed in their early post-New York interactions. Steve’s over-carefulness not to mention the Hulk. Not to paint Bruce as anything warped or negative. It was exactly the opposite of what Bruce probably needed, which was people acting _fucking normal_ for once, and not like he was an easily startled animal, or a live explosive. It was very selfishly difficult for awhile, to have that tied to the general super soldier legacy- a legacy Steve never asked for but got anyway, he’d argue before he reminded himself of the thing Bruce hadn’t asked for but dealt with anyway-

 But he knows what she means- it’s not fair. The guy who tries to be be as far from the battlefield as he can get is dragged onto it with no better options, helps save the world despite how hard it had come down on him, and is running out of time on a life he never wanted. 

 “Can I see him?” She nods, finally sucking the jelly from her thumb and standing, and Steve can see herself pulling it together bit by bit, hardening, preparing herself. There’s guilt weighing her down, stress and frustration but there’s something else too. “Of course you can.” She says gently. “I doubt he’ll be awake, I think they want to keep him sedated if they can, and he’s um…” she takes a moment to work on the lump in her throat. “He’s delirious…when he’s awake, so-“ Steve nods. “It’s okay. Sometimes all you can do is be there.” He says, just to put the thought in the air, for both of them, knowing they were both going to have to wait on Tony and whatever team he had behind him to figure things out. 

 She leads him down the softly-lit hallway past the mostly-empty rooms Tony had designed for their own medical bay, to keep them from relying so deeply on SHIELD, and thank god he had, because otherwise they’d be stuck with little options and few places ill-equipped to handle people with superhuman abilities. In a conference room, Tony is conferring with several men and women, a few of them in lab coats and wearing protective medical gear and Steve and Natasha don’t stop long enough to hear their conversation. “They’ll want you to put a mask and gloves on, by the way.” She says with a hint of annoyance and Steve is about to ask why before they finally reach the door and Natasha doesn’t even bother to knock. 

 Steve stops in the doorway, even as Natasha creeps in and steps to the other side of the bed, which is surrounded by an arsenal of medical equipment, beeping and whirring softly, wires and lines all leading down to Bruce, who is tethered by monitors and dripping IVs. A nurse, who might as well be in a full hazmat suit, holds an oxygen mask to his mouth as he struggled to breathe, gasping and fumbling as if he were drowning. Steve’s heart jackhammers in his throat as he takes it in, the sounds, the unseemly grey of his teammate’s skin, the emesis basin half-full of blood sitting on the counter, waiting to be properly disposed of. _It’s not possible_ , Natasha’s voice repeats in his head, _but it’s still happening_. Opposite the nurse, Natasha sits in silence, her own hand clasped in Bruce’s. 

 It seems like it takes hours, but it’s only been a few minutes when things seem to settle, Bruce is breathing with a labored regularity and the nurse abandons the mask and allows him to rest and Steve desperately wishes that this didn’t all take him back so very very quickly, the sound of liquid stirring in someone’s lungs, the iron and acid smells of blood and fever sweat, and the sinking feeling of helplessness- it’s different, it has to be different this time, but even as Steve thinks with despair about watching his mother slip away under violent and painful gasps- drowning like Bruce was now drowning, it stiffens his spine a bit. Captain America was useless here, but Steve Rogers…

 Well, sad to say, Steve Rogers knew how to take on this situation. 

 He takes the chair on the other side, eyes flickering up to the monitors, something they hadn’t had on their side back then, these things that reassured you with sound that someone’s heart was still beating. “I’m glad you’re here.” She finally says, and Steve watches her as her fingers trace the veins on Bruce’s hand. Neither Bruce nor Natasha were known for their…closeness no matter who was involved and this tiny show of intimacy surprises him. It’s telling. That’s different for her. “I’m sure if he…knew, he would be too.” He can tell it’s difficult but she finally looks up from their hands to Bruce’s face. Pain collects itself in the furrow of her brow and she reaches out with a fingertip to trace away a bead of sweat from his forehead, hesitating before stroking his damp hair away. 

 A tiny raise of the eyebrow must give him away because she catches it, and responds with a sort of tired scowl. Right, he thinks, bad timing. Be nosy later. “Should I leave?” he asks quietly, with a somewhat understood honesty. Something’s happened, obviously. Between them. Even if curiosity leaps into him immediately, he stops himself from asking. She shakes her head. “No.” She says confidently, settling back into her chair, watching the tiny flickers of Bruce’s eyes as he slept. “He doesn’t think he deserves to be here.” She mumbled idly. “He told me that. I thought it was ridiculous. I still do. A lot of us don’t “deserve” that, but here we are.” He can tell Natasha wants to sleep, the way she keeps adjusting her position, never letting go of his hand, squeezing it occasionally to give herself something to do. “He’s one of us and he needs to be reminded that we give a shit.” Steve nodded in agreement. 

 “I know.” Steve tries hard, somewhat fruitlessly and endlessly, to instill a sense of team-building among this little rag-tag group, sometimes with a little success, but it was easier said than done- the wild variations of their experiences, how they saw the world, their fighting skills- he was jut as guilty as anyone else when it came to being wrapped up in his own head. “I know others have already told you, but you should get some sleep.” He tells her, and he can see she wants to fight back at, but he can also see bandages beneath her clothes. He knows Natasha will ignore her wounds as long as someone else is in trouble whether she realized it or not. She is a much better hero than she gives herself credit for. “You’re not much good to him half-dead, Natasha.” 

 Tony would call that an unfair use of his “Cap Voice” but Tony has bigger things to worry about right now. 

 She stands up, bring Bruce’s hand down to rest on his chest, fingers tracing the skin before leaving it. Her shoulders are slumped in defeat. “If _anything_ changes-“ She doesn’t even have to finish. “You’ll be the first to know.” He reassures gently. “I got this. He won’t be alone.” Before she leaves, she allows herself a hug. “You did good.” He murmurs against the top of her head. He knows she doesn’t need this, his encouragement, but if Steve was good for _anything_ in this universe, it was cheering someone on even when they wished he wouldn’t.  He starts to guide her towards the door, allowing her to slip out on her own. 

 Within a few seconds, the universe puts him to the test. 

 Bruce seems to convulse slightly, and for a second, Steve is terrified he’s having a seizure, and he feels like a child all over again- but reflex memory kicks in as soon as he hears that pained, wet breath that escapes him. He leans down, sliding a hand beneath Bruce’s back and helping him to sit up, the other hand grabbing for a clean emesis basin on the table, trying to be supportive and calm as he watches his teammate cough up blood. “Easy…” he murmurs uselessly. “Just breathe…it’s okay…” He’s not good at this. He’s never felt good at this in his life, not like his mother was, not like Bucky was, all those times Steve was sick and weak and helpless- but in the moment, self-pity isn’t going to stop any of this from happening. So Steve just works with what he knows. He washes out the bowl because he knows it’ll happen again. He cleans away the blood spattered onto Bruce’s cheek and neck and wipes away the sweat from his forehead, because he knows, if nothing else, all a sick person really wants is their dignity preserved. 

 Halfway through these ministrations, Bruce’s eyes open. It doesn’t last long, but it’s enough to give Steve a tiny thread of hope. “Hey.” he says quietly, with a smile, even if he’s not looking anymore. It takes a painful amount of effort, watching the column of his throat work hard to swallow the pain back, to conjure the breath to speak. 

 “Steve…” There’s hardly any trace of Bruce’s voice left in there, but it’s enough for Steve to grin, and he reaches out and squeezes Bruce’s shoulder in response. “Yeah.” He wanted to make sure Bruce knew he wasn’t seeing things. “Yeah, it’s me.” It’s a surprise, looking at him, that the one word doesn’t expend all of his energy, but Bruce tries to persist, even as Steve wants to tell him not to, to just keep resting and hold on. His eyes, which are so much more tired than he’s ever looked, which is saying _a lot_ when it came to Bruce, open one more time, looking up at Steve with a deep sort of longing, for things to just _stop_. 

 “Am I home?” 

 He can’t stay awake long enough to hear the answer, but Steve offers it anyway.

 “Yeah, pal. You’re home.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, so I want to apologize for taking a HUGE break from this fic, which I really do love writing, and I'm so grateful to all those who continued to read and leave comments and kind messages. It was, admittedly, a little hard for me to get back in the right headspace post-AOU and to commit to the story again, but all your encouragement really helped. Hope I didn't take too long and lose everyone : / 
> 
> also I tried my hand at Some Sorta Steve Rogers and idk how successful I was.


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